If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureacracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy will not. -- Hyman Rickover, as quoted in the *New York Times*, Nov. 3, 1986 A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought. -- George F. Kennan, *The Cloud of Danger*, 1977 Rigid justice is the greatest injustice. -- Thomas Fuller, *Gnomologia*, 1732 Laws are silent in times of war. [*Silent enim legis inter arma*.] -- Cicero, *Pro T. Annio Milone oratio*, 52 B.C. It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. -- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954 America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. - Ayn Rand We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a real American talk like that. -- Frank Hague, New York World-Telegram, April 2, 1938 We call a tyrant the leader whose only law is that of his own whim, who expropriates the property of his subjects, and then drafts them to go take that of their neighbors. -- Voltaire, "Tyrannie", Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764 You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Herakleitos, 535 BC (http://www.forthnet.gr/presocratics/heracln.htm) The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing -- Herbert Spence, "The American", Essays, 1891 I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Arkansas' refusal to accept the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling, May 14, 1958. Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, the Younger, speech in the House of Commons, Nov. 18, 1783 A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John B. Colvin, Sep. 20, 1810 The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionnaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work. - Friederich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944 I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. -- Robert G. Ingersoll, Prose-Poems and Selections, 1884 The creation of the \"Department of Homeland Security\" is likely to have the same or even more devastating results for security and freedom that the creation of the \"Department of Education\" had for education and learning. Leon Felkins I tell you that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone to whom he can hand over quickly that gift of freedom with which the unhappy creature is born. But only he who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom. Quotations From Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and "The Grand Inquisitor" (from The Brothers Karamazov) http://www.tearsofllorona.com/under.html Naturally the common people don't want war... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. - Hermann Goering, 1936 http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/goering.htm "The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good and hard." H. L. Mencken The most urgent task of the social sciences ought to be studies concerning the unintended consequences of intended human action. --Karl Popper, 1957 . . . every individual serves his own private interest. . . . The great Saints of history have served their "private interest" just as the most money-grubbing miser has served his interest. The private interest is whatever it is that drives an individual. Milton Friedman, "The Line We Dare Not Cross," Encounter, November 1976. You can't do just one thing. Hardin, Garrett. (1968). "Human ecology", American Zoology, 25, 469-476 Deitrich Dörner in his book, The Logic of Failure: "[I]t is far from clear whether 'good intentions plus stupidity' or 'evil intentions plus intelligence' have wrought more harm in the world." "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." Voltaire What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing. -- H.L. Mencken I once defined "government" as "a system of murder, rape, extortion, coercion, theft, intimidation, and terror, the absence of which, it is said, would lead to disorder." Butler Shaffer "Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no control over them. Don't worry about things that you have control over, because you have control over them." -- Mickey Rivers As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss. Noam Chomsky Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one's fear. The timid presume it is lack of fear that allows the brave to act when the timid do not. But to take action when one is not afraid is easy. To refrain when afraid is also easy. To take action regardless of fear is brave. — Ambrose Hollingworth Redmoon A full tub, a big glass of iced tea, all the bubbles I can muster, and a book to weigh me down long enough to enjoy it all... that and revenge against my enemies is all I ask out of life. -- Anonymous (found on "Amish Tech Support" page) At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. Ludwig Wittgenstein "As I understand it, laws, commands, rules, and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway." -- Anne Hutchinson, 1591-1643 "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things they don't understand, such as working for a living." P.J. O'Rourke "It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place." H. L. Mencken "We must ask ourselves what kind of people would brazenly attempt to frame the innocent in a federal courtroom. The only possible answer is evil people. Evil is afoot in the criminal justice system." Paul Craig Roberts in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. The U.S. Code, which contains all federal statutes, occupies 56,009 single-spaced pages. Its 47 volumes take up 9 feet of shelf space. An annotated version, which attempts to bring order out of chaos, is 36 feet long and has 230 hardcover volumes and 36 paperback supplements. Administrative lawmaking under statutes fill up the 207-volume Code of Federal Regulation, which spans 21 feet of shelf space and contains more than 134,488 pages of regulatory law. The Federal Register updates federal regulations daily. In 1994, its 250 volumes had a total of 68,107 pages. Federal law is further augmented bymore than 2,756 volumes of judicial precedent, taking up 160 yards of law library shelving. Paul Craig Roberts in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. The American public, having accepted limits on govt's ability to change society, must now also accept equally exacting limits on society's ability to change govt. Jonathan Rauch "Government's End" National Journal 1/7/00 Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. Paul Craig Roberts in "No-Think Nation V: Making Citizens the Enemy" William Pitt (1759-1806), House of Commons, 18 Nov. 1783: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Bob Emmers, `Orange County Register': "The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work. No, the task of government is to make it look as though problems have been solved, while continuing to keep the maximum number of consultants and bureaucrats employed dealing with them." Jeremy Bentham said "Now and then, it is true, one error may be driven out, for a time, by an opposite error; one piece of nonsense by another piece of nonsense; but for barring the door effectually and forever against all error and all nonsense; there is nothing like the simple truth." "Lord, how the world is given to worshiping words! Eschew the coarse word slavery, and you get glad acceptance for a condition of actual slavery. A man is a slave when his labour (sic) products are appropriated, and his activities are governed by some agency other than himself; that is the essence of slavery. Refrain from using the word Bolshevism, or Fascism, Hitlerism, Marxism, Communism, and you have no troubles getting acceptance for the principle that the State is everything, and the individual nothing." - Albert Jay Nock -When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it. Anonymous The rich who are unhappy are worse off than the poor who are unhappy; for the poor, at least, cling to the hopeful delusion that more money would solve their problems -- but the rich know better. -- Sydney J. Harris The only thing I respect is intellectual honesty, of which, of course, intellectual courage is a necessary part. A Socialist who goes to jail for his opinions seems to me a much finer man than the judge who sends him there. . . . But though he is fine, the Socialist is nevertheless foolish, for he suffers for what is untrue. If I knew what was true, I'd probably be willing to sweat and strive for it, and maybe even die for it to the tune of bugle-blasts. But so far I have not found it. -- H. L. Mencken (This Side of Paradice, page 204) ".. there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection." -- David Hume - Selected Works, Oxford University Press, 1993 We receive three educations: one from our parents, one from our schoolmaster, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us. -- Baron de Montesquieu "Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4. If that is granted, all else follows." ---George Orwell, 1984 "At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." F. SCOTT FITZGERALD "Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience, and reflection." AMBROSE BIERCE The Devil’s Dictionary "The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful ." EDWARD GIBBON The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." E. W. DIJKSTRA "There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity." SCHOPENHAUER "When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." JONATHAN SWIFT "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself ." ALEXANDER HAMILTON The Federalist Feb.8, 1788 "It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume... that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him." H. L. MENCKEN "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them ." JAMES BALDWIN "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." ANATOLE FRANCE "That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time ." JOHN STUART MILL On Liberty Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. -- Vernon Law "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs. Thomas Sowell, *Vision of the Anointed*, page 142 There are no tyrants, there are only slaves. -- Anselme Bellegarrigue (from an article by Arthur Lehning in *Dictionary of the History of Ideas*, Volume 1, "Anarchism".) Also see http://student.ulb.ac.be/~xbekaert/Anarch/Citations.htm which translates to: "You believed so far that there were tyrants? And well! you were mistaken, it has only slaves there where no one does not obey, nobody orders." All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are “up to a point.” George F. Will "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." (H. L. Mencken.) "It is also in despair of being able to understand or make any productive contribution to the highly organised chaos of our politico-economic system that large numbers of people simply abandon political and social committments. They just let society be taken over by a pattern of organisation which is as self-proliferative as a weed, and whose ends and values are neither human nor instinctive but mechanical." - Alan Watts - from "Instinct, Intelligence And Anxiety" "WE HAVE FOUND THE ENEMY, AND HE IS US". ALBERT ALLIGATOR FROM THE POGO 'POSSUM CARTOON STRIP OF THE 1950s. "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin In his book Prejudices, Fifth Series, he said thinkers constitute at best "one-eigth of one per cent of the human race", and this: The rest of God's children are just as incapable of logical thought as they are incapable of jumping over the moon. . . . The only thing to do with them is to make Ph.D.'s of them, and set them to writing handbooks on style. There are no tyrants; there are only slaves. - Anselme Bellegarrigue A Liberal is committed to sure cures that always turn out to be swindles; a Libertarian throws the bottles out of the window, and asks only that the patient be let alone. Mencken, Page 256 Trying to teach [style] to persons who cannot think, especially when the business is attempted by persons wo also cannot think, is a great waste of time, and an immoral imposition upon the taxpayer of the nation. - H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Fifth Series, 1926, Page 201. ... the public estimation of eminence runs almost directly in inverse ratio to its genuineness. That is to say, the sort of eminence that the mob esteems most highly is precisely the sort that has least grounding in solid worth and honest accomplishment. Mencken, page 289 "The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced." -Frank Zappa Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Philip K. Dick Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. Mahatma Gandhi 45. In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. --Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984) When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it. Clarence Darrow 1857-1938 "It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people." -- Giordano Bruno(1548-1600)(Burnt at the stake by the Church) "Most man's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them." -- Santayana, George (1863-1952) ... a social policy that induces people to believe that they are not responsible for their lives is one that inhibits the pursuit of happiness and is to that extent immoral. Charles Murray There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote. A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat. So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote. —William Butler Yeats Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the govenments 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 D. Brandeis, US Supreme Court Justice, Dissenting, Olmstead v. US, 277 US, 438 (1928) To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being. -- Tom Robbins "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a Democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritial faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage." --Fraser Tyler, English historian, while the U.S. was a British colony People who are truly committed to government exhibit the same dull self-satisfaction and slightly vapid peace of mind as do devout churchgoers. Unknown You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles A. Beard It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion. -- Dean Inge Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinion, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -- Oscar Wilde It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Thomas Jefferson The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. -- H. L. Mencken "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." -- Albert Einstein "When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war other, in order that the people may require a leader." - Plato, The Republic "All bad precedents began as justifiable measures." -- Julius Caesar Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. --H.L. Mencken "All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.... The typical politician is not only a rascal but also a jackass, so he greatly values the puerile notoriety and adulation that sensible men try to avoid." H.L. Mencken Baltimore Evening Sun August 19, 1935 "There's always at least two possible reasons for any political act and the one stated is never the real one" -- Leon Felkins "The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head." H.L. Mencken "Don't vote. You'll only encourage them." -- Graffiti at Oxford "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience "Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength." Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Paine "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." - Abraham Lincoln "If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side." -Orson Scott Card "Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitary power,they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience,..." -- John Locke, 2nd Treatise of Government, 1690 "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for exam- ple in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand....The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!" Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, *The Gulag Archipelago* "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." --H. L. Mencken A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness. -- Walter Bagehot "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of it's waters....power concedes nothing without a demand...it never did, it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or both...The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress" -- Frederick Douglass, 1857 The war on teen smoking is going to be just as successful as the war on drugs. Just as the war on drugs has weakened our Bill of Rights protections against unreasonable search and seizures (Article IV) and taking of property without due process of law (Article V), the war on tobacco promises to continue the process. When our Constitution is finally buried, a fitting inscription for its tombstone might be, ``We Did It For The Children.'' -- Walter Williams, 1998 "In other words, governments do not collect taxes to provide services, they provide services as an excuse to collect taxes."--Richard J. Maybury, Whatever Happened to Justice? "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector."--Plato, circa 400 BC "The Natural Rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can."--Samuel Adams. "No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent."--John Jay, Address to the People of Britain, 1774 "No government is ever in favor of freedom of the individual. It invariably seeks to limit that freedom, if not by overt denial, then by seeking to constantly widen its own functions...All governments, of course, are against liberty..."--H.L. Mencken "It may be true...that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."--Will and Ariel Durant "We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place."--Daniel Boorstin They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike." From Aristotle's "Politics", Written c.a. 350 BC "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making." Otto von Bismarck (the "Iron Chancellor" of 19th century Germany) "Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot hear of levelling up to themselves." Samuel Johnson "One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. Ambrose Bierce Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. Ambrose Bierce Kleptomaniac: A rich thief. Ambrose Bierce Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. Ambrose Bierce Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission. Ambrose Bierce Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. Ambrose Bierce Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence... Ambrose Bierce Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. Ambrose Bierce Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. Ambrose Bierce Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses. Ambrose Bierce Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Ambrose Bierce Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter...The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion... Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation...A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others. Ambrose Bierce Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. Ambrose Bierce Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. Ambrose Bierce ...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. -- Ambrose Bierce November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. Ambrose Bierce Once, adv.: Enough. Ambrose Bierce In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. -- Ambrose Bierce Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. Ambrose Bierce Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. Ambrose Bierce It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats. Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee: 1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck"). 2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!" Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. "It is bad luck to be superstitious." -- Andrew W. Mathis If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut." Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. Slick's Three Laws of the Universe: 1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. 2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat. 3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Altito Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object. If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted. -- Marguerite Emmons Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to.....to........uh.............. "If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means." -- Walt Kelly Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. A penny saved is ridiculous. The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind. "You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do." If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country. Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof. A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of). To be is to do. -- I. Kant - To do is to be. -- A. Sartre - Yabba-Dabba-Doo! -- F. Flinstone God is Dead -- Nietzsche - Nietzsche is Dead -- God - Nietzsche is God -- Dead Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends. Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality. Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs. Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the Station-to-Station rate. Necessity is a mother. In the days of old, When Knights were bold, And women were too cautious; Oh, those gallant days, When women were women, And men were really obnoxious... Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. If anything can go wrong, it will. $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" Il brilgue: les t^ oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^ im' es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^ omerade horgrave. Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't-- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-- that's all." Oh, when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. - And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again. -- A. E. Housman Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide. -- Stanislaw Lem In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency -- the Peter Principle Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way... A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip. A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. -- Ambrose Bierce I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Fran Lebowitz When Marriage is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Inlaws. HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains. -- Walt Kelley Anything worth doing is worth overdoing Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets. -- Ambrose Bierce If all be true that I do think, There be Five Reasons why one should Drink; Good friends, good wine, or being dry, Or lest we should be by-and-by, Or any other reason why. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Every solution breeds new problems. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: "Murphy was an optimist." Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it. Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. Scott's first Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. Scott's second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. Finagle's first Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. Finagle's second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory. Finagle's third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. Finagle's fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them. Issawi's Laws of Progress: - The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. - The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later. Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even quit the game. - Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game. Ehrman's Commentary: 1. Things will get worse before they get better. 2. Who said things would get better? Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done. Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it. Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions. Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory. Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Corollaries: 1. The bigger the theory, the better. 2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods. Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists. Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense. Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets. H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach -- administrate. Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom. A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed. After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found on the bench. In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables. Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be. First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind. Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken. If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S Truman Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor. Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some. Gray's Law of Programming: 'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as 'n' tasks. - Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law: 'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks. Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays. Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way. Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't. Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better looking and richer male friend. Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats. Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom. Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad -- get even. Canada Bill Jone's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces. Jone's Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously. Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage. Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something. Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. "He is now rising from affluence to poverty." -- Mark Twain A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. -- Mark Twain "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved" -- Mark Twain I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain "...all the modern inconveniences..." -- Mark Twain We have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Walt Kelly Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister -- Su Tung-p'o The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". -- H. Allen Smith Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? -- Ralph Emerson Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. "By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)" -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"] Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. R. W. Emerson; Art, 1841 A fool must now and then be right by chance. Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes, nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home. Arnold's Laws of Documentation: 1) If it should exist, it doesn't. 2) If it does exist, it's out of date. 3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws. Boren's Laws: 1) When in charge, ponder. 2) When in trouble, delegate. 3) When in doubt, mumble. Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will. Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time. Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions. Probable-Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she's unable to postulate how. -- Frederick Winsor Vail's Second Axiom: The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed. Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off "Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray." Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, He must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, Must be a pacifist. What's in that pipe that he's smoking? -- Arlo Guthrie There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it -- G. B. Shaw Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax. It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. Ambrose Bierce You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty. -- Henrick Ibson Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery... by leaving it out. Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again. -- Lazarus Long I like work... I can sit and watch it for ours. Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A. "The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them." -- Major Major's father Crime does not pay...as well as politics. -- A. E. Newman Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art. -- Ogden Nash Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. Ambrose Bierce Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. Ambrose Bierce NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right. -- G. B. Shaw People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it. -- Ogden Nash Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep. A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks. -- Lew Col Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face. Recieving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache. -- Dolph Sharp The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100 showed that all had these things in common: 1) They all had moderate appetites. 2) They all came from middle class homes 3) All but two of them were dead. Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny Did you ever try buying them without money? -- Ogden Nash Confucius say too much. -- Recent Chinese Proverb Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. -- Ambrose Bierce Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad. -- W. C. Fields "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" -- W. C. Fields A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five time eleven, Equals nine squared plus zero, no more. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us. If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble acturiety and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle -- Would you kindly direct me to hell? -- Dorothy Parker "This is a country where people are free to practice their religion, regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys..." The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far, I've had no complaints. -- Dorothy Parker THEORY Into love and out again, Thus I went and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pen: Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Someone dropped me on my head? -- Dorothy Parker If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again. If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much; But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn. -- Dorothy Parker COMMENT Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. -- Dorothy Parker INVENTORY Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. - Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. - Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. - Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall. "He's just a politician trying to save both his faces..." "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels. Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it. He who Laughs, Lasts. Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature. Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear. To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL. -- Mae West Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. Ambrose Bierce Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. - A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. -- Ambrose Bierce Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce Adore: To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce Alone: In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh. Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. -- Ambrose Bierce Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce Birth: The first and direst of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. -- Ambrose Bierce Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think. -- Ambrose Bierce In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. -- Ambrose Bierce Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." -- Ambrose Bierce Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. -- Ambrose Bierce Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend. -- Ambrose Bierce Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. -- Ambrose Bierce Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. -- Ambrose Bierce Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. -- Ambrose Bierce Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. -- Ambrose Bierce Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. -- Ambrose Bierce There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy... -- Ambrose Bierce Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. -- Ambrose Bierce ...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce Incumbent: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents. -- Ambrose Bierce Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. -- Ambrose Bierce There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. -- Disraeli You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers. -- J. D. Salinger gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpindicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny. Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should. A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers? Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink? Friends, Romans, Hipsters, Let me clue you in; I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him. The square kicks some cats are on stay with them; The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes; If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea, And, like, old Caeser really set them straight. Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat; So are they all, all cool cats, -- Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the double lock will keep; May no brick through the window break, And, no one rob me till I awake. f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd. "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem." -- Ashleigh Brilliant Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success. ...But among the children of the Great Society there were those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was niggardly, and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat... - Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go to the front of the bus." - But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall prove yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like unto a snowball in Hell." It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate. Those who can't write, write manuals. Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together. Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him. Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn. "He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes..." It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with? The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think. Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -- W. C. Fields There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. .. Ambrose Bierce Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. .. Ambrose Bierce Question: Man Invented Alcohol, God Invented Grass. Who do you trust? The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school. You cannot kill time without injuring eternity. Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing. -- R. Geis Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too. -- D. J. Hicks Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. Familiarity breeds attempt 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 Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired. -- R. Geis "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" -- Lewis Carroll THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES The one who has the gold makes the rules. Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management. -- Senator Soaper Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat. Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. -- Bellamy Brooks Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. There was a young lady from Hyde Who ate a green apple and died. While her lover lamented The apple fermented And made cider inside her inside. Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them. Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. Jones' First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps. Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up. Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Jules de Gaultier Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion. Justice: A decision in your favor. Kin: An affliction of the blood Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date. Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen. Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes. Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France BLISS is ignorance God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about. -- Hilaire Belloc The three laws of thermodynamics: - The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it. The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even. The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero. Famous last words: 1) "Don't worry, I can handle it." 2) "You and what army?" 3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop." When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw Time flies like an arrow Fruit flies like a banana Science is what happens when preconception meets verification. Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. --Oscar Wilde The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. -- Oscar Wilde About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Herbert Hoover It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen. Never try to outstubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives. God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. Ambrose Bierce One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is somebody has to buy retail." -- Arthur Naiman "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. -- Voltaire For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy. Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun "I drink to make other people interesting." -- George Jean Nathan Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do. All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance. If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. -- Milton Friedman There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone. -- Gloria Steinem TV is chewing gum for the eyes. -- Frank Lloyd Wright Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. -- Eric Hoffer If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? -- Richard Nixon Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so. It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. Eugene Ionesco The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful for the sake of something else. - Aristotle "Okay!! Let's get this party started! Break out the Perrier! Heat up the asparagus! Who's got the ice?!" - Penguin Opus (Bloom County) Ill play with it first and tell you what it is later. MILES DAVIS Im hungry! Im hungry! for good things to eat for Sugar Jets, Sugar Jets (whole toasted wheat) ADVERTISEMENT I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. LUCINDA CHILDS (PHILIP GLASS: EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH) Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. HASSAN I SABBAH Dont let your mouth write no check that your tail cant cash. BO DIDDLEY The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. NIELS BOHR Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ORACLE "The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." H P LOVECRAFT Take what you can use and let the rest go by. KEN KESEY "When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one Ive never tried before." MAE WEST Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves. LITTLE RICHARD I never loved another person the way I loved myself. MAE WEST Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. SIGMUND FREUD Her life was saved by rock and roll. LOU REED I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. J EDGAR HOOVER "Lip-mashing is an oddity in the wild kingdom." - Milo Bloom (Bloom County) "The heathen run amok." - Otis Oracle (Bloom County) "This is penguin lust at its UGLIEST!" - Otis Oracle (Bloom County) The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. ALBERT EINSTEIN Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. TALLULAH BANKHEAD A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms. GEORGE WALD Dont lose Your head To gain a minute You need your head Your brains are in it. BURMA SHAVE It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been always thus. DEAN LATTIMER Burnt Sienna. Thats the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas. KEN WEAVER We dont know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasnt a fish. JOHN CULKIN Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure Ill never find out the truth. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Please dont ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT If you cant learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT The social habits of famous people are like the sexual practices of porcupines, which urinate on each other to soften the quills. P. J. O'Rourke (Modern Manners) An important person should be treated exactly like anyone else holding a gun at your head. P. J. O'Rourke (Modern Manners) I dont have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Maybe Im lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT "I like folks! All types and kinds! People are a weakness o' mine... Swat my hind with melon rind, But dat's my penguin state o' mind!" - Penguin Opus (Bloom County) Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeopardy I would never had lit one. MAXIM OF THE HELLS ANGELS It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night. WILLIE SUTTON Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting. BILLY ROSE The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. KARL MARX If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it ... it would have been much better. KARL MARX'S MOTHER A great many people think they are thinking when they are rearranging their prejudices. William James When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality. AL CAPONE Anything anybody can say about America is true. EMMETT GROGAN Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT If youve seen one city slum, youve seen them all. SPIRO AGNEW If youve seen one redwood, youve seen them all. RONALD REAGAN He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return. SOUTH AFRICAN SAYING Use it up ... Wear it out. Make it do ... Or do without. US WORLD WAR II MESSAGE You cant underestimate the power of fear. TRICIA NIXON The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak. WAVY GRAVY The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. BUCKMINSTER FULLER "What does the term `Liberated Woman' mean to you?" "Fat, manless and hairy legged." - Steve Dallas and Quiche Lorraine (Bloom County) "Well, he =LOOKS= like Mussolini!" - Mrs. Albaghetti (Bloom County) Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER You smash it - and Ill build around it. JOHN LENNON College isnt the place to go for ideas. HELLEN KELLER Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. ARTHUR C CLARKE America, how can a write a holy litany in your silly mood? ALLEN GINSBERG It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody. RICHARD M NIXON Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic. ARTHUR C CLARKE Justice is incedental to law and order. J EDGAR HOOVER Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. GROUCHO MARX The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. ABBIE HOFFMAN Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old. PINK FLOYD Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still dont know what I want to be when I grow up. PETER DRUCKER How can you be two places at once when youre not anywhere at all? FIRESIGN THEATER I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. OSCAR WILDE In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst, the last is the real tragedy. Oscar Wilde Lord of himself, though not of lands, And having nothing, yet hath all. Sir Henry Wotton (1614) Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde We are what we pretend to be. KURT VONNEGUT, JR We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. OSCAR WILDE The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but thats the way to bet. DAMON RUNYON I could prove God statistically. GEORGE GALLUP No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. H. L. Mencken No man is genuinely happy, married, who has to drink worse whiskey than he used to drink when he was single. H. L. Mencken The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. H. L. Mencken Life, fundamentally, is not worth living. [Therefore, man] confects artificialities to make it so. So he erects a gaudy structure to conceal the fact that it is not so. H. L. Mencken ... education is by no means synonymous with intelligence. H. L. Mencken My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ALBERT EINSTEIN Real wealth can only increase. R BUCKMINSTER FULLER Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. John Maynard Keynes Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. Laurence J. Peter Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. Honore' De Balzac I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. Neil Armstrong Anyone can hate. it costs to love. JOHN WILLIAMSON In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. JOHN LILLY Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space. GRAFFITI To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. OSCAR WILDE The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization. ALAN COULT If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. STANLEY GARN The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls. FATHER ROBERT F CAPON Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. RICHARD M NIXON We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitiable. JOHN F KENNEDY "Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isnt, it aint. Thats logic." LEWIS CARROLL It takes a long time to understand nothing. EDWARD DAHLBERG To know the world one must construct it. CESARE PAVESE Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak. BULLWINKLE MOOSE The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out. TENESSEE WILLIAMS An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name. RENE MAGRITTE All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya dont go lookin' for rutabagas. KINGFISH He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. M C ESCHER Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences: If at first you don't suceed, transform your data set. Laws of Computer Programming (1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete. (2) Any given program costs more and takes longer. (3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. (4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented. (5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory. (6) The value of a program is porportional to the weight of its output. (7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it. (8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English. SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. CALVIN COOLIDGE The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. PAUL ERLICH If A equals success, then the formula is: A= X + Y + Z X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. ALBERT EINSTEIN Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either. JOSEPH FISCHER Fourth Law of Thermodymanics: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero. DAVID ELLIS The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum. Havelock Ellis Frouds Law: A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility: 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P 1 Pot P != 1 Pot T R BUCKMINSTER FULLER The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights. J PAUL GETTY Gilb's Laws of Reliability (1) Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. (3) The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who attacks a systrem is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front. (5) Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used. (6) The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system are the key to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle. (7) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited. (8) All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise - which is impossible. (9) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some useful work done. TOM GILB Roberts' Rules of Management: 1. If your don't know what you want, you probably won't get it. 2. Know what your want; dont't take no for an answer. 3. There's not a train so long that it does not have a caboose. 4. You may not always get what you pay for, but you will always pay for what you get. 5. No deal is better than a bad deal. Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. H. L. Mencken Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H. L. Mencken Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. ABRAHAM KAPLAN The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems. ROGER LEVIAN Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. ROBERT D SPRECHT (RAND CORP) Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. GERALD WEINBERG Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right. What will people say? - in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. -B. AUERBACH Free curiosity is of more value than harsh discipline. -SAINT AUGUSTINE Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. CONFUCIUS Who so diggeth a pit shall fall therein. BOOK OF PROVERBS It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. MARK TWAIN The unnatural, that too is natural. GOETHE I used to be indecisive; now Im not sure. GRAFFITI I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didnt like it. SAMUEL GOLDWYN He hasn't one redeeming vice. OSCAR WILDE I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. GRAFFITI Continence is a greater good than marriage. But I am aware of some that murmur: if all men should abstain from intercourse, how will the human race exist? Woulr that all would abstain; much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened. - SAINT AUGUSTINE Wives are young men's mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men's nurses. - FRANCIS BACON (To Walter Cronkite): "Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street" - Neil Armstrong - "You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for you to enter the Promised Land." - The Midrash - " 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability" - George Bernard Shaw - "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" Ashley Montague - "Birth, Copulation, and Death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks" T. S. Elliot - "Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood." D. B. Hudson - "Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ' user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover." Bill Gates,Pres.,Microsoft,Inc. - Eight Things your computer won't do: 1) It won't save you money 2) It won't make your organization run right 3) It won't solve every problem 4) It won't run itself 5) It won't always be right 6) It won't meet all its own needs 7) It won't protect itself 8) It won't become obsolete J. Makower - Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful,we can organize them into a committee... that will do them in. Civilization Law #1: Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations one can do without thinking about them. Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence. "Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel" H. L. Mencken - If we assume that man actually resembles God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, and idiot, and a bounder. H. L. Mencken (Smart Set, 1919) To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride. H. L. Mencken (Smart Set, 1920) Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous.. . The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. H. L. Mencken A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one. . . . A man makes sacrifices to his wife's desires, not because he greatly enjoys giving up what he wants himself, but because he would enjoy it even less to see her cutting a sour face across the dinner table. H. L. Mencken (Prejudices, 1924) In all my years of search in the world, . . ., I have never met a thoroughly moral man who was honorable. H. L. Mencken (Smart Set, 1919) [a comment on those who work for the government?] A man who gets his board and lodging on this ball in an ignominious way is inevitably an ignominious man. H. L. Mencken (Smart Set, 1922) [on a man's rise to success] In every case the lady was full of palpable fear . . . that he became a worse husband in proportion as he became a better man. H. L. Mencken [Women] have rid themselves, very largely, of the absolute need to please men, but they have not yet rid themselves of the impulse to please men. H. L. Mencken (Prejudices, 1926) All that is worth knowing about sex -- all, that is, that is solidly established and of sound utility -- can be taught to any intelligent boy of sixteen in two hours. H. L. Mencken (Prejudices, 1926) Every man is his own hell. H. L. Mencken There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public. H. L. Mencken I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. H. L. Mencken I would that the last king were strangled with the guts of the last priest. Jean Meslier (1733) The grand achievement of the present age is the diffusion of superficial knowledge. John Stuart Mill If unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonor, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must be much more deflowering and dishonorable. John Milton Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not. Maria Mitchell To understand via the heart is not to understand. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) O belief! How much you hinder us. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) Cowardice, mother of cruelty. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) I speak truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) An untempted woman can not boast of her chastity. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) On the most exalted throne in the world, we are still seated on our arse. Michel E. De Montaigne (1590) You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. John Morley Give the vote to the people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them. Gouverneur Morris (1787) Copulo, ergo sum. Malcolm Muggeridge Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution. Vladimar Nabokov "Faith" means not wanting to know what is true. Friedich Nietzche Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose. Friedich Nietzche It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author - and not learn it better. Friedich Nietzche The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help of it, one has got throught many a bad night. Friedich Nietzche Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul. Friedich Nietzche ...woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love. Friedich Nietzche The Jews are not hated because they have evil qualities; evil qualities are sought for them, because they are hated. Max Nordau The masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general. Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1930) Christianity has ever made of death a horror which was unknown to the gay calm of the Pagan. Ouida (1870) The Moslems offer one God and three wives; we offer three Gods and one wife. James A Pike Do to others as I would they should do to me. Plato One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. Alexander Pope (1734) "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion" George Washington - "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty." Thomas Jefferson When we talk of pleasure, we mean sensual pleasure. when a man says, he had pleasure with a woman, he does not mean conversation, but something of a very different nature. Samuel Johnson (1778) Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. Samuel Johnson (1779) "During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." James Madison Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of Philosophy? John Keats Compromise does not mean cowardice. John F. Kennedy [Three classes]: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see. Leonardo Da Vinci (1500) For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are. Niccolo Machiavelli (1517) Nothing is evil which is according to nature. Marcus Aurelius Antonius (180 A.D.) Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Herman Melville (Moby Dick 1851) For the crowd, the incredible has sometimes more power and is more credible than Truth. Menander 291 B.C.E. "Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations" - Thomas Jefferson - "We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately" - Benjamin Franklin - "Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried" - Thomas Jefferson - "Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles" - Pat Paulsen - "An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself" - Camus - "I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it" - W. C. Fields - "Six years for possession of a cigarette?...I got six months for possession of a deadly weapon!" - cartoon by S. Harris - The Swartzberg Test: The validity of a science is its ability to predict. "There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race" - Alfred North Whitehead - "My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities." - James A. Michener - "What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!" - Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian - Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth-to see it like it is, and tell it like it is-to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth-RICHARD NIXON,on accepting the presidential nomination in 1968 A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits- RICHARD NIXON There's nothing sadder than an old hipster-LENNY BRUCE When I was kidnapped my parents snapped into action, they rented out my room- WOODY ALLEN When people tell you how young you look, they are also telling you how old you are-CARY GRANT When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour.That's relativity-ALBERT EINSTEIN One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar-HELEN KELLER Man cannot live by incompetence alone- LAURENCE PETER "Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die" - John W. Campbell - "That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest" - Thoreau - Life is not one thing after another.... it's the same damn thing over and over! The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars. After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done. Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone. What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick. "Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgi - I really hate this damn machine, I wish that they would sell it. It never does just what I want, But only what I tell it. "Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it" - Gordon R. Dickson - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz - Ode to Turbulent Flow: Big whirls have little whirls Which feed on their velocity, And little whirls have lesser whirls And so on, to viscosity. "In God we Trust" -UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT -It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted to my kind of fooling" - R. Frost - "Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!" - Ben Jonson - Don't debate with fools. CHANAKYA PANDIT (350 -275 B.C) He is a Governor that governs his Passions, and he is servant that serves them. BEN FRANKLIN A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon. BEN FRANKLIN Is there anything men take more pains about than to make themselves unhappy? BEN FRANKLIN When your intelligence has passed out of the dense forest of delusion, you shall become indifferent to all that has been heard and all that is to be heard. BHAGAVAD GITA Work as if you were to live 100 years, pray as if you were to die tomorrow. BEN FRANKLIN The honey is sweet, but the Bee has a sting. BEN FRANKLIN Great Talkers should be cropp'd, for they have no need of Ears. BEN FRANKLIN Many have quarrel'd about Religion, that never practiced it. BEN FRANKLIN You may delay, but Time will not. BEN FRANKLIN Whatever action a great man performs, common men follow. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues. BHAGAVAD GITA Chapter 3 Text 21 Approve not of him who commends all you say. BEN FRANKLIN He that won't be counsell'd, can't be help'd. BEN FRANKLIN Great spenders are bad lenders. BEN FRANKLIN The same man cannot be both friend and flatterer. BEN FRANKLIN Faith reigned with scarcely a rebellious subject... She built cathedrals for God and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. Robert Ingersoll The object of the Freethinker is to ascertain the truth - the conditions of well-being - to the end that his life will be made of value. Robert Ingersoll A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie. Robert Ingersoll Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the tree of knowledge. Robert Ingersoll In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences. Robert Ingersoll I dogmatise and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight. Samuel Johnson The more things change, the more they are the same. Alphonse Karr God improves as man advances. Robert Ingersoll The clergy know, I know, that they know that they do not know. Robert Ingersoll Think of the egotism of a man who believes than an infinite being wants his praise! Robert Ingersoll Free thought will give us truth. Robert Ingersoll Man naturally rushes from one extreme to another. Robert Ingersoll Love has never produced a safe society. It is only when people don't care enough to draw blood that we have a reasonable assurance of making it through the night. Donald G. Smith 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. G. B. Shaw Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes? G. B. Shaw When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. G. B. Shaw A grazing zebra can count his friends on the fingers of one hoof when a lion is prowling in the tall grass. Donald G. Smith Friends are for enjoying, not needing. Donald G. Smith .. we should realize that learning is, of itself, the most usable of all skills. Donald G. Smith The difference between work and play is in the matter of control. When someone else decides when you are through, it is work. Donald G. Smith The American family seems to have two predominant functions: to provide warmth and love in time of need and to drive each other insane. Donald G. Smith The nonconformist is marching with the forces of righteousness when no one has come to see the parade. Donald G. Smith .. experience is the most inefficient method of learning .. Donald G. Smith There is nothing wrong with being rediculous if you feel rediculous. It is only when you seek dignity from the experience that you establish a kinship with the ass end of a horse. Donald G. Smith Equity exists only when it is permitted to exist. Donald G. Smith We are a society that has ended diphtheria and cholera but is completely baffled by a mugging in a dark alley. Donald G. Smith If you would unsettle someone, call him a name. If you would destroy him, turn your back. Donald G. Smith The principle value of positive thinking is that it gives us something to do while we are waiting - like reading a magazine in the barber shop. Donald G. Smith To understand yourself, know exactly how phony you are willing to be under any and all circumstances. Donald G. Smith While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed of my own and my creed is this: Reason is the only torch, Justice the only worship, Humanity the only religion, Love the only priest, Happiness the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to help make others so. Robert G. Ingersoll No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. Bishop Mandell Creighton Whenever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation. Daniel Defoe Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old age a regret. Disraeli If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Voltaire Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire There are no sects in geometry. Voltaire Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. Alfred North Whitehead All is for the best in the best of possible worlds. Voltaire Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. Oscar Wilde I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simply beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. Oscar Wilde To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy. Dean Inge Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. Woody Allen You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. Bob Dylan Equality I spoke the word As if a wedding vow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. Bob Dylan All political questions, all matters of right, are at bottom only questions of might. August Bebel The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. R. W. Emerson Rationalists as such are not philosophers. They are not pantheists nor speculative materialists. They ignore, if they do not despise, metaphysics, and in practise eschew the search for first principles. A. J. Balfour: (1895) A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what you mean by two, what by makes and what by four. For asking such questions metaphysicians are supported in oriental luxury in the universities, and respected as educated and intelligent men. H. L. Mencken The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and dispursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell. H. L. Mencken (Prejudices, 1922) He that talketh what he knoweth will also talk what he knoweth not. Francis Bacon: (1625) (On delusions) "The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions . . . No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such." Sigmuend Freud Feelings of guilt were thus a sign not of vice, but of virture. The super-ego of conscience was the drastic price the individual paid for preserving civilization, and its cost in misery would increase inexorably as civilization advanced. Paul Johnson (Modern Times) It is a commonplace that men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of avowed malice but from outraged righteousness. Paul Johnson I think that it can be fairly said that EVERYTHING in the Holy Land is cursed. P. J. O'Rourke A man's desire is for the the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man. Sameul Coleridge (1827) Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. Demosthenes (322 BCE) The life which is unexamined is not worth living. Plato (348 BCE) Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live. Socrates (399 BCE) The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates (399 BCE) Our species . . . probably has not changed during the last 20,000 years. Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi The mass of men lead lives of quite desperation. Thoreau Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. Thoreau Our life is frittered away by detail . . . Simplify, simplify. Thoreau 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 which he hears, however measured or far away. Thoreau There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Thoreau Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle . . . "Great God, let not two times two make four." Ivan Turgenev (1862) I detest what you write, but I would give my live to make it possible for you to continue to write. Voltaire Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. Mark Twain American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness and optimism. George Santayana Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them. George Santayana The majority of men. . . are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and . . . are not accessible to reason, but only to authority. Arthur Schopenhauer Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity. Arthur Schopenhauer The wise man lives as long as he should, not as long as he can. He will think of life in terms of quality, not quantity. Lucias Annaeus Seneca (65 A.D.) Every man over forty is a scoundrel. G. Bernard Shaw I am not sincere even when I am saying I am not sincere. Jules Renard Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. Quoted from the book "A Course in Miracles" (A good one to pass to a friend dying of cancer) The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues. . . Fisher Ames (1758-1808) Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained;. . . William Blake (1793) Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. Guido Bruno (1600) He that studies books alone will know how things ought to be; and he who studies men will know how they are. Charles Caleb Colton (1829) God is for men and religion for women. Joseph Conrad With newspapers, there is sometimes disorder; without them there is always slavery. Benjamin Constant (1830) Every woman should marry, and no man. Benjamin Disraeli (1870) You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. Norman Douglas Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter, Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ. Will Durant Only the fortunate can take life without mythology. Will Durant Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: T. S. Eliot Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. Ralph Waldo Emerson We are always getting ready to live but never living. Ralph Waldo Emerson Men make the gods; Women worship them. Sir James Frazer Either war is obsolete or men are. Buckminster Fuller The mob that would die for a belief seldom hesitates to inflict death upon any opposing heretical group. Ellen Glasgow He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew. Johann W. Von Goethe (1790) Talents are best nurtured in solitude; Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. Johann W. Von Goethe (1790) By reason only can we attain to a correct knowledge of the world and a solution of its great problems. Reason is man's highest gift, the only prerogative that essentially distinguishes him from the lower animals. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel The Bible nowhere prohibits war. In the Old Testament we find war and even conquest positively commanded, and although war was raging in the world in the time of Christ and His Apostles, still they said not a word of its unlawfulness and immorality. Henry W. Halleck, General, Civil War In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides. Heinrich Heine (1842) ...that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful. Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms) It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. William Ernest Henley [The bourgeois] prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. Hermann Hesse It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and for power - power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate. Eric Hoffer It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor. Eric Hoffer No generalization is wholly true, not even this one. Oliver Wendell Holmes A man's mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies and supernatural events, whinch, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind. David Hume (1748) ...there is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection. David Hume (1740) Chastity - the most unnatural of the sexual perversions. Aldous Huxley Rob the average man of his life-illusion and you rob him of his happiness. Henrik Ibsen People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness. John Wanamaker All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. Samuel Johnson And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of god. Ecclesiastes 3:13 Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more. Proverbs 31:6-7 A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. Proverbs 31:10 It is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to desire strong drink; lest they drink and forget what has been decreed, and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. Proverbs 31:4-5 "I'd lie to you for your love - that's the truth." Country Song "I've always been crazy - but it's kept me from going insane" Country Song (Waylon Jennings) The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible. Bertrand Russell Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master. Sallust (40 B.C.E.) Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Ayn Rand It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand. Mark Twain The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around. Herb Cain It is a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year. Truman Capote Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. Oscar Wilde Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws. Karl Kraus Sense has ever been centered in the few. . . Votes should be weighed, not counted. The State must sooner or later be wrecked where the majority rules and ignorance decides. Friedrich Von Schiller (1798) Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. U. S. Supreme court (Roth 1957) I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life, the power to create. Vincent Van Gogh Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure. Oscar Wilde I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots. William Butler Yeats Puritan tradition, combined with Christian management of adolescence, has converted the sexual life of civilized men and women into a neurosis. Robert Briffault Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years. John Burroughs An Apology to the Devil. It must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case. God has written all the books. Samuel Butler Christianity is a woman's religion, invented by women and womanish men for themselves. Samuel Butler People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced. Samuel Butler Going to church doesn't make your a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence J. Peter Clergyman, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones. Ambrose Bierce God must hate the common people, because he made them so common. Philip Wylie Conscience and cowardice are the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. Oscar Wilde [Conscience is] the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking. H. L. Mencken Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water. Shakespeare, Henry VIII Poor Brutus, with himself at war, Forgets the shows of love to other men. Shakespeare, Julius Caeser He that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death. Shakespeare, Julius Ceaser Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest. Shakespeare, King Lear Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? Henry James Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. Proverbs 22; 9 In democratic nations everything noble and of good account tends to decay and smell badly. H. L. Mencken The public estimation of eminence runs almost directly in inverse ration to its genuineness. H. L. Mencken One of the most curious of human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men . . . [actually] they are themselves among the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. H. L. Mencken Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Ambrose Bierce Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 35,717,342 [folks] to chose from, . . pick out a Coolidge to be head of state. It is as if a hungry man, set before a banquet . . . turns his back upon the feast and stays his stomach by catching and eating flies. H. L. Mencken The American moron . . . wants to keep his Ford, even at the cost of losing the Bill of Rights. H. L. Mencken 80 percent of all the scientists who ever lived are alive today - unfortunately, that is also true for the looneys. Announcer on Public Radio 10/15/89 No, I don't practise what I preach, but then I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to. Church of Sub-Genius Sermon Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts. W. H. Auden [Jews and Arabs should settle their differences] like good Christians. Warren R. Austin, U. S. Diplomat A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. W. H. Auden An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. John Buchan I am still an atheist, thank God. Luis Bunuel There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse. Quentin Crisp I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. Bob Dylan Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad. Leo Rosten (said about W.C. Fields) I have spent a lot of time searching through the Bible for loopholes. Said by W.C. Fields during his last illness. Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read. Frank Zappa Ministers constitute, perhaps, the most ignorant class of teachers ever set up to lead a civilized people; they are even more ignorant than the county superintendents of schools. H. L. Mencken Life is to be enjoyed and if it is not, it makes people ill in one way or another. Louise Bogan When the party gets boring it's time to go home. Mr. Hollywood How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call the progress of the world...? Yeats I must create a system myself or be enslaved by another man's. Blake Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it. George Bernard Shaw The only measure of a man's usefulness is the extent to which he exercises his talent, according to the laws of his own growth, for the common good. Stanley Kunitz Private faces in public places are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places. W. H. Auden Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to look at a painting. Ed Reinhart No matter how hard you throw a dead fish into the water, it still won't swim. Marian Stevens Whenever a rock falls, it is good to go forward and meet it. That's the adventure. Henry Miller It is not down in any map; true places never are. Melville If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being? Solzhenitsyn Only the wildest animals need cages. Donald Hall Horses with free rein will travel where others have been before. John Steinbeck I don't find any correlation between size and greatness. Woody Allen Hesitate or fumble and you are done for. Think only of the jump. Virginia Woolf Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are. John Gardner If you look like your passport photo, in all probability you need the journey. Earl Wilson A quart cannot become a gallon. Malaysian Proverb When one doesn't know how to dance, he says the ground is wet. Malaysian Proverb A knowledge of Sanskrit is of little use to a man trapped in a sewer. Tom Weller The glad man is he who does not lose his child's heart. K'ung Fu-tse What is the use of lighting the lamp if there is no wick? Malaysian Proverb He who requires much from himself and little from others will be secure from hatred. K'ung Fu-tse An empty bus travels fast. Tom Weller A man who knows that he is a fool is not a great fool. Chuang Tzu Falling hurts least those who fly low. Chinese Proverb A man with a clear conscience does not tremble at a midnight knock on his gate. Chinese Proverb If a ruby falls in a puddle, it will not lose it's luster. Malaysian Proverb Where there is sugar, there are ants. Malaysian Proverb Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. Howard Aiken Because the water is still, you must not think there is no crocodile there. Malaysian Proverb Three helping one another will do as much as six men singly. Spanish Proverb He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning. Danish Proverb The only sin is self-hatred. Paul Williams Even a small star shines in the darkness.Danish Proverb The absent are always at fault. Spanish Proverb Nodding the head does not row the boat. Irish Proverb There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home. Mark Twain Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. Yugoslav Proverb He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know. Lao Tzu That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Friedrich Nietzche I was angry at a friend. I told my wrath; my wrath did end. I was angry at a foe. I told him not; my wrath did grow. William Blake Religion without science is blind. Science without religion is lame. Albert Einstein The radical invents the new ideas, and when he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. Mark Twain Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Ambrose Bierce Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clark I'm not afraid of flying, I'm afraid of crashing. Neil Simon Wait until your father gets home! Mom Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? James Thurber Harry Lime: You know what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did they produce? The Cuckoo Clock. "The Third Man" Script, O. Welles Insanity is hereditary, - You get it from your children. An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought. A closed mouth gathers no foot. Ancient Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times. Ancient Chinese Curse: May all your wishes be granted. Organization is the enemy of improvisation. Familiarity breeds. A good memory does not equal pale ink. Kitman`s Law: Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel. Zymurgy`s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can. A Smith and Wesson beats four aces. You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back you`ve got something. First Law of Advice: The correct advice is to give the advice that is desired. There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system. If little else, the brain is an educational toy. -- Tom Robbins Sweer`s Impossibility Theorem: Nothing can be both completely general and internally consistent at the same time. Chisolm`s Third Law, Corollary 1: If you explain so clearly that no one can misunderstand, somebody will. Chisolm`s Third Law, Corollary 2: If you do something which you are sure will meet with everyone`s approval, somebody won`t like it. Crane`s Law: There ain`t no such thing as a free lunch. Law of Communications: The result of improved and enlarged communications is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. The usefulness of a meeting is inversely proportional to its attendance. The Peter Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties. [On democracy] The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. George Bernard Shaw Parkinson`s First Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Shanahan`s Law: The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the soul of genius. The six steps in a project: 1) Unbounded enthusiasm 2) Total disillusionment 3) PANIC!! 4) Frantic search for the guilty 5) Punishment of the innocent 6) Promotion of the uninvolved. Lost interest? It`s so bad I`ve lost apathy. God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends. If you make people think they`re thinking, they`ll love you; but if you really make them think they`ll hate you. It is better to wear out than to rust out. It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put a lot of relatives on the train for home. The plural of spouse is spice. To do is to be - Nietzsche To be is to do - Sartre Do be do be do - Sinatra What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he`s staring out the window. Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes. Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to avoid responsibility? The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Be yourself and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before. Elbert Hubbard If you would be remembered, do one thing superbly well. Saunders Norvell Measure a thousand times and cut once. Turkish Proverb Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company. George Washington Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. John W. Gardner Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life. Bertolt Brecht Fish or cut bait. American proverb If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. Rene Descartes Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut. Daniel Greenberg Tyranny is the normal pattern of government. Adlai E. Stevenson Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. Mark Twain Remember, the truth is rude. Consider the truth about where babies come from, especially some people's. P. J. O'Rourke (Modern Manners) Even better than being cute or rich is being pretty. Pretty people are forgiven absolutely anything they do. And there's a very good reason for it. If it weren't for them, masturbation would be so dull for the rest of us. P. J. O'Rourke (Modern Manners) [On alcohol] If you are young and drink a great deal, it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat -- in other words, turn you into an adult. P. J. O'Rourke (Modern Manners) Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess. Samuel Johnson Fish and visitors smell in three days. Benjamin Franklin [From "The Politician"] "... he quickly discovers there that hooey pleases the boobs a great deal more than sense. Indeed, he finds that sense really disquites and alarms them -- that it makes them, at best, intolerably uncomfortable, just as a tight collar makes them uncomfortable . . or the thought of Hell." H. L. Mencken The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache. H. L. Mencken ... what is put into words for the general ear can never come within even the remotest reach of what is pondered in the privacy of the study or praying-room. H. L. Mencken The penalty of intelligence is oblivion. H. L. Mencken The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone -- one which barely escapes being no government at all. H. L. Mencken All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. H. L. Mencken The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. H. L. Mencken Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of marvels. Goya "The solution to the violence problem is to take all the violent people out and shoot them!" (overheard at a church party) The mad mov does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees. Martin Luther Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging. Martin Luther Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates form God. Martin Luther He remains a fool his whold life long Who loves not women, wine, and song. Martin Luther (attributed) It makes a difference whose ox is gored. Martin Luther God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman. Victor Hugo Popularity? It is glory's small change. Victor Hugo Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo The supreme happiness of live is the conviction that we are loved. Victor Hugo I hate quotations. Tell me what YOU know. Ralph Waldo Emerson You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both. Ralph Waldo Emerson To be great is to be misunderstood. Ralph Waldo Emerson Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom? Herman Melville God made integers, all else is the work of man. Leopold Kronecker I can resist everything except temptation. Oscar Wilde Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it. --- Troutman's Fifth Postulate Some people march to a different drummer, ignoring the rest of the world. A few dance to the piccolo. Paul Chance It is a fine thing to face machine guns for immortality and a medal, but isn't it a fine thing, too, to face calumny, injustice and loneliness for the truth which makes men free? H. L. Mencken Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. Alexandre Dumas If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated. Voltaire God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out. Arthur Koestler No good deed goes unpunished. Clare Boothe Luce I've decided to skip "holistic". I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward "Gestalt" and the Twist, and lived to tell the tale. Calvin Trillin There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste. Bertolt Brecht A woman who takes her husband about with her everywhere is like a cat that goes on playing with a mouse long after she's killed it. Saki Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient. H. L. Mencken Psychoanalysis is the disease it purports to cure. Karl Kraus Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist. Oscar Wilde Every law is an infraction of liberty. Jeremy Bentham A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment. Willis Player Life can little else supply But a few good fucks and then we die. John Wilkes Love is the most subtle form of self-interest. Holbrook Jackson The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots. Rebecca West Don't knock masturbation - it's sex with someone I love. Woody Allen The good thing about masturbation is that you don't have to dress up for it. Truman Capote I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. Charles Schultz To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. Voltaire The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Groucho Marx I got married the second time in the way that, when a murder is committed, crackpots turn up at the police station to confess the crime. Delmore Schwartz Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe We owe to the middle ages the two worst inventions of humanity -- gunpowder and romantic love. Andre' Maurois Those that have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money. Gerald Brenan People will swim throught shit if you put a few bob in it. Peter Sellers Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 percent of them are wrong. H. L. Mencken The inflictions of cruelty with good conscience is a delight to moralists -- that is why they invented hell. Bertrand Russell Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity. Eric Hoffer Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an erection. Anonymous I'm not OK, you're not OK, and that's OK. William Sloane Coffin A man is as old as the woman he feels. Groucho Marx Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have charge of children, but there can be no dobut that parents are the worst. George Bernard Shaw A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. H. L. Mencken We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us. Lionel Trilling My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live. Erica Jong A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James A promiscous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are. Victor Lownes The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore. H. L. Mencken The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Thomas Macaulay All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for. Logan P. Smith We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. H. L. Mencken Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. Franz Kafka Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. H. L. Mencken Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress. Quentin Crisp Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right. Woody Allen In the dues of sex, woman fights from a dreadnaught and man from an open raft. H. L. Mencken I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. Wilson Mizner The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help of it one has got through many a bad night. Friedrich W. Nietzsche Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. H. L. Mencken He hasn't a single redeeming vice. Oscar Wilde A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul. George Bernard Shaw A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure. Karl Kraus On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women. H. L. Mencken Women who insist upon having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type. Fran Lebowitz If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle. Rita Mae Brown God will not have that we should attain a higher knowledge of things. Martin Luther When people have no tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one. Edward Bulwer-Lytton The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted. John Lyly Behold, my son, with what little wisdom the world is ruled. Count Oxenstierna I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it. Marilyn Monroe Sex: Something that children never discuss in the presence of their elders. Arthur S. Roche [Dave Barry on the Miss America pageant] "After a day of smiling like insane persons and talking about how they would very much like to help handicapped animals, [the contestants] went back to their hotel rooms and unwound by smoking enormous cigars and spitting out the window onto elderly pedestrians." [Dave Barry on sports] "Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing." [Dave Barry on babies] "A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators." [Dave Barry on Democrats] "Time was when the Democrats were no competition in terms of patriotism. They were always nominating their presidential candidates at 3 a.m. amidst clouds of marijuana smoke, and it was always somebody like George McGovern, who would make a speech where he'd call on Cuba to invade the United States, and for the closing ceremony they'd have Eldridge Cleaver spit on a Bible." The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. Lord Acton Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction - God, country, power of State, national honor, historical, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare. Michael Bakunin Prisons are built with stones of law, brothers with bricks of religion. William Blake Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. Thomas Jefferson Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences. Thomas Paine Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or nation. Oscar Wilde Majority rule is not founded -- anymore than emperor's rule -- on reason or justice. There is no reason or justice in making two men subject to three men. . . Do robbery and murder cease to be what they are if done by ninety-nine per cent of the population? Auberon Herbert . . . if you consider these worthy voters as incapable of providing for their own interests, how can they be capable of choosing directors to guide them wisely? How to solve this problem of social alchemy: to elect a government of geniuses by the votes of a mass of fools? Errico Malatesta If voting could change anything, it would be illegal. Graffiti A law is not a law without coercion behind it. James Garfield The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws. Tacitus That government is best which governs least. Thomas Jefferson The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rescally individuals of mankind. Thomas Paine Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. Psalms 137:9 The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow men. Robert Ingersoll The development of freedom requires that one be ruthlessly free of illusions, for only then will one succeed in rooting out irrationalism from masses of people to open the way to responsibility and freedom. To idealize masses of people and commiserate with them will only produce fresh misfortunes. Wilhelm Reich Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. George Bernard Shaw Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? . . . Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. V. I. Lenin My object, my hope, in translating the Scriptures, was to check the so prevalent production of new works. Martin Luther In this world if you do not say a thing in an irritating way you may just as well not say it at all, because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them. George Bernard Shaw The true believer must not condemn war but must look upon it as a necessary evil, as a punishment which God has imposed upon men. For war is, like pestilence and famine and all other evils only a visitation of God for the chastisement of men for their betterment, and to prepare them for salvation. St. Augustine Work makes you free. Inscription over entrance to Auschwitz It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience - and the prudence never to practice any of them. Mark Twain [Political rights] do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will be met with the violent resistance of the populace. Rudolf Rocker Most women would rather be beautiful than smart because most men can see better than they can think. Anonymous ABNORMAL: Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" FRIENDLESS: Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" PHILOSOPHY: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Truth dose not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. Giordano Bruno Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us at the tomb. Our first questions are answered by ignorance and our last by superstition. Robert Ingersoll Life, if well lived, is long enough. Seneca Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior. George Bernard Shaw The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. Jonathan Swift Men are like snow storms. You never know how many inches you're going to get or how long they're going to last. Graffiti He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. William Drummond .. if you, I, and everyone else in the world were thoroughly scientific, and if we consistently used the scientific method in our own lives and in our relationships with others, we would rarely upset ourselves about anything -- and i mean _anything_! Albert Ellis If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of Nature, shall be demonstrated, there will be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect. Robert Ingersoll To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons. Robert Ingersoll Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Thomas Jefferson The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture. Pope Paul V Sin is the moral cause of earthquakes, whatever the natural cause may be. John Wesley People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy . . . Michael Bakunin FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" HEATHEN: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" PRAY: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" RELIGION: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so. Josh Billings Religion is excellent stuff for keeping people quite. Napoleon Bonaparte A metaphysician is a man who goes into a dark cellar at midnight without a light looking for a black cat that is not there. Baron Bowen Most people's religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe. Luther Burbank Where knowledge ends, religion begins. Benjamin Disraeli The man who worships a tyrant in heaven naturally submits his neck to the yoke of tyrants on earth. G. W. Foote So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition. Edward Gibbon, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ Hands that help are nobler than lips that pray. Robert Ingersoll Praying is like a rocking chair - it'll give your something to do, but it won't get you anywhere. Gypsy Rose Lee There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings. Friedrich Nietzsche The man who says to men, "Believe as I do, or God will damn you," will presently say, "Believe as I do, or I shall kill you." Voltaire A gentleman is one who never strikes a woman without provocation. H. L. Mencken If half the engineering effort and public interest that go into the research on the American bosom had gone into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon. Al Capp Chastity is the most unnatural of the sexual perversions. Remy de Gourmont Give a woman a job and she grows balls. Jack Gelber Love is the answer. But while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions. Woody Allen Moralizing and morals are two entirely different things and are always found in entirely different people. Don Herold Life is a joke God plays on us. Some take the joke too seriously: they are likely to become fanatics or madmen. Others don't take it seriously enough: they are likely to become humorists or libertarians. Most people, of course, take it just the right way: they are likely to become normal persons. Thomas Szasz Marriage: The desire to merge both bodies and lives -- yielding, as a rule, the sacrifice of copulation for companionship or vice versa. Thomas Szasz If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. Thomas Szasz Religion: 1. Boundless conceit concealed as utmost modesty. 2. Justifications for regulating one's own behavior and coercing others to regulate theirs. 3. An inexhaustibel mine of meaning for the mentally lazy. Thomas Szasz Intelligence test: Hocus-pocus used by psychologists to prove that they are smart and their clients stupid. The general acceptance of these tests suggests that this claim may not be without foundation. Thomas Szasz The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But perhaps you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself. Thomas Szasz Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. Thomas Szasz The liberal-scientific ethic: if it's bad for you, it should be prohibited; if it's good for you, it should be required. Thomas Szasz All generalizations are false -- including this one. Unknown Let us try to _teach_ generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense. Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ It may well be that all animal [which includes humans] communication contains an element of deception right from the start, because all animal interactions involve at least some conflict of interest. Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ I am reminded of P. B. Medawar's remark about the attractions of 'philosophy-fiction' to 'a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought'. Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_ Government never does what is moral, right, or fair. It only does what those who have best learned to manipulate the system to their own advantage want it to do. Mack Tanner As regards any subject we propose to investigate, we must inquire not what other people have thought, or what we ourselves conjecture, but what we can clearly and manifestly perceive with intuition or deduce with certainty. For there is no other way of acquiring knowledge. Rene Descartes 1637 ..it is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain. Hans Kung ..reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. Blaise Pascal To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher. Blaise Pascal What can be said at all can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945. It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor. Eric Hoffer Sweer`s Impossibility Theorem: Nothing can be both completely general and internally consistent at the same time. I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. Charles Schultz I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unreasonable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect. @GENERAL= Oscar Wilde #Experience - a comb life gives you after you loose your hair. Judith Stern #Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings. Laurence J Peter #Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. Laurence J Peter #Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Laurence J Peter #Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. G J Nathan #Enough research will tend to support your theory Murphy's Law of Research #No-one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend. Groucho Marx #Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. Mignon Mclaughlin #God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place. Dr J D McCoughey #When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy. Stanislaw Lec #When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath your feet. Stanislaw Lec #The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink. Fran Lebowitz #The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on. Jones' Law #Experience enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again. F P Jones #It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome K Jerome #Boys will be boys and so will a lot of middle aged men. Kin Hubbard #Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down. Graffiti #God is not dead. He is alive and working on a much less ambitious project. Graffiti #The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made. Jean Giraudoux #Anyone who says he isn't going to resign, four times, definitely will. John Kenneth Galbraith "If a man does his best, what else is there?" - George S. Patton (1885-1945) "Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) "Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) "Don't be so humble - you are not that great." - Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." - St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (circa 5th century AD) "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford (1863-1947) "Wit is educated insolence." - Aristotle (284-322 B.C.) "A narcissist is someone better looking than you are." - Gore Vidal "Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them." - Samuel Palmer "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." - Paul Dirac (1902-1984) "It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims." - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation." - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916) "What do you take me for, an idiot?;" General Charles de Gaulle, when a journalist asked him if he was happy "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) "A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) "Logic is in the eye of the logician." - Gloria Steinem "No one can earn a million dollars honestly." - William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) "Everything has been figured out, except how to live." - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) "Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech." - Martin Fraquhar Tupper "It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "When ideas fail, words come in very handy." - Goethe (1749-1832) "In the end, everything is a gag." - Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) "The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people." - Lucille S. Harper "The graveyards are full of indispensable men." - Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) "You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." - Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) "If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975) "I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." - General George Patton (1885-1945) "Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure." - Oliver Herford (1863-1935) "Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting." - Gloria Leonard "Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives." - Abba Eban "Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century." - Perelman "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." - Henry David Thoreau "Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind, sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health." - Thomas Jefferson, 1784, in a letter to Madison The public is pusillanimous and cowardly because it is weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon suggestion. -- William Hazlitt, 1821 No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. (STANISLAW LEC) Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with which the many are governed by the few. (DAVID HUME) Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient. -- Mr. Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Opinion in Olmstead vs. U. S., 1928 Our government...teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) "Althought we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know that government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flockbelonged to the wolf." "From Freedom to Slavery"- Gerry Spence "To be governed is to be watched,inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, liscenced, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed;then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. THAT is government;that is its justice;that is it's morality." P.J. Proudhon It is [the] belief in absolutes, I would hazard, that is the great enemy today of the life of the mind. This may seem a rash proposition. The fashion of the time is to denounce relativism as the root of all evil. But history suggests that the damage done to humanity by the relativist is far less than the damage done by the absolutist - by the fellow who, as Mr. Dooley once put it, "does what he thinks th' Lord wud do if He only knew th' facts in th' case." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." J. Swift Accept your fate as the stream accepts the stream bed. The bed forms the stream; the stream forms the bed. William Markiewicz, in Extracts of Existence It is not what happens that affects us, it is our feelings about it. It is not our cover, but our body warmth which sustains us. William Markiewicz, in Extracts of Existence The classical formula "I am me plus my circumstance" means that you can neither divorce yourself nor divorce your circumstances. You can only operate with whatever is within you and around you. William Markiewicz, in Extracts of Existence To live outside the law you must be honest. - Bob Dylan He who is not busy being born is busy dying. Bob Dylan Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. Rousseau Ninety percent of what is thought shouldn't be said; ninety percent of what is said shouldn't be written; ninety percent of what is written shouldn't be published; ninety percent of what is published shouldn't be read; ninety percent of what is read shouldn't be remembered. -- Israel Salanter Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -C.S. Lewis George Washington once said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.", Ecclesiastes 12.13 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1.18 A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fools's heart toward the left. Ecclesiastes 10.2 "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Calvin Coolidge "The ultimate consequence of protecting men from the results of their own folly is to fill the world with fools." Herbert Spencer ". . . a fact's undesirable consequences have, of course, nothing to do with its validity." Brett Summers "It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover" (Poincaré) "It is with logic that one proves; it is with intuition that one invents." ---- Henri Poincare Q: Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? A: I don't know and I don't care. "Everybody's business is nobody's business." Russell Hardin, Collective Choice, 1982. "'Society' is the imposition of the ignorance of the masses on those intelligent enough to recognize it as such, yet powerless to its effects." Eli Khamarov "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." -- William Gibbs McAdoo, American government official (1863-1941). "Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life." -- Saul Alinsky (1909–72) "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother." (Anon) "Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty." -- Edward Gibbon (1737–94) "There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) "When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will." -- William Shakespeare (1564–1616) "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -- Lord Acton (1834–1902) ------------------------------