741 lines
23 KiB
Plaintext
741 lines
23 KiB
Plaintext
HANLON'S RAZOR:
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Never attribute to malice that which
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can be explained adequately by stupidity.
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But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
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It speaks, and yet says nothing.
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-- SHAKESPEARE, commenting on television, in ROMEO AND JULIET
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(as noted by Marshall McLuhan)
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Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared
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than a thousand bayonets.
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-- NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
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"Open the pod bay door, Hal".
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"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
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-- 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
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The only thing worse than being talked about behind your back,
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is not being talked about at all.
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In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak
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because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
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didn't speak because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
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unionists, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a trade unionist.
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Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I
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was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time no
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one was left to speak up.
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-- Pastor Martin Niemoller
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It is of more importance to the community that innocence should be
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protected than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and
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crimes are so frequent in the world that all of them cannot be
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punished, and many times they happen in such a manner that it is not
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of much consequence to the public whether they are punished or not.
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But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned,
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especially to die, the subject will exclaim, "It is immaterial to me
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whether I behave well or ill, for virtue is no security". And if such
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sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject there
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would be an end to all security whatsoever.
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-- John Adams
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ALL I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN THE MARINES
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- Eat all of your vegetables.
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- Make your bed every day.
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- Warm, moist footwear leads to
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severe problems with fungus.
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- When someone tells you to, run
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full speed at another person and
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stab them with a bayonet.
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----- Steve Posner
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Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world
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will be clean.
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Johann Wolfgang von G<>the
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"The loss of free speech is regrettable,
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but it is a cheap price to pay."
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-- San Francisco Police Chief Richard Hongisto, 2 May 92
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(Fired after only 45 days on the job.)
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"What some textbooks are doing is giving students ideas,
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and ideas will never do them as much good as facts."
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-- NORMA GABLER, co-founder of Educational Research Analysis,
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a schoolbook review committee (from FORUM, the newsletter
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of People for the American Way)
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"When a student reads in a math book that there are
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no absolutes, suddenly every value he's been taught
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is destroyed. And the next thing you know, the student
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turns to crime and drugs."
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-- MEL GABLER, co-founder of Educational Research Analysis,
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a schoolbook review committee (from FORUM, the newsletter
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of People for the American Way)
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"It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom;
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it is another sight finer to fight for another man's."
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-- MARK TWAIN
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"I made this letter longer than usual because
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I lack the time to make it shorter."
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-- PASCAL, Provincial Letters XVI
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The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.
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-- D.E. KNUTH ("The art of computer programming", chapter 4)
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"I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
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of 40,000, or even 4,000 per hour; such a revolutionary change as the
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octonary scale should not be imposed upon mankind in general
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for the sake of a few individuals."
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-- F.H. WALES (1936)
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"The only important elements in any society
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are the artistic and the criminal,
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because they alone, by questioning the society's values,
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can force it to change."
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-- the Linguistic Ubiquitous Multiplex (Lump)
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in EMPIRE STAR by Samuel R. Delany
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"Love and loyalty to an individual
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can run counter to the claims of the State.
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When they do -- down with the state, say I,
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which means the State would down me."
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-- E.M. FORSTER, 1938
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"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words
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`Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force
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every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker,
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`Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England."
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-- GEORGE ORWELL, 1937
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"What is hateful to yourself, don't do to others. That is
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the whole Torah, the rest is commentary, now go study."
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-- RABBI HILLEL
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"But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent
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of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime,
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then he is not a suspect."
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-- ED MEESE, in U.S. News & World Report, 15 Oct 85
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"A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription
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is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense
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that ever entered into the head of man."
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-- DANIEL WEBSTER, speech in the House of Representatives, 14 Jan 1814
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"The best way to secure liberty is to exercise it."
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-- JOHN BARLOW
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"Cyberspace is where you are when you're talking on the telephone."
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-- MITCH KAPOR
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If all problems of hyphenation have not been solved,
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at least some progress has been made
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since that night, when according to legend,
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an RCA Marketing Manager received a phone call
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from a disturbed customer. His 301 had just hyphenated "God".
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-- PAUL E. JUSTUS, There's More to Typesetting Than Setting Type (1972)
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"Travel is lethal to prejudice."
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-- MARK TWAIN
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Jennings' Innate Perversity of Nature Rule:
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The tendency of Nature to cause exactly the thing you are not
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prepared for, to happen. This is because Nature gets to use the
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set of all things not known to humans, which by definition
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is infinite.
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"Paradise is just like where you are right now, only much better."
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-- LAURIE ANDERSON ("Language is a virus")
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
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-- LANCE HANSCHE
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Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
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-- HASSAN I SABBAH
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"Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail cant cash."
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-- BO DIDDLEY
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"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
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opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
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-- NIELS BOHR
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Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
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-- SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ORACLE
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"The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human
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mind to correlate all its contents."
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-- H P LOVECRAFT
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"The most merciless thing in the world... is the inability of the human
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mind to correlate all its contents."
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-- H P LOVECRAFT
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"Take what you can use and let the rest go by."
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-- KEN KESEY
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"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
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-- SIGMUND FREUD
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"When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one
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I've never tried before."
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-- MAE WEST
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"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night."
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-- WILLIE SUTTON
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"If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
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largest shopping center in the world?"
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-- RICHARD M. NIXON
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"When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
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it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality."
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-- AL CAPONE
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"Anything anybody can say about America is true."
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-- EMMETT GROGAN
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"If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all."
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-- SPIRO AGNEW
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"If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all."
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-- RONALD REAGAN
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He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
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SOUTH AFRICAN SAYING
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"The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this
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incredible jailbreak."
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-- WAVY GRAVY
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"The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun."
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-- BUCKMINSTER FULLER
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"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."
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-- DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
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"America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?"
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-- ALLEN GINSBERG
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"It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore,
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I have to beat somebody."
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-- RICHARD M. NIXON
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"Justice is incidental to law and order."
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-- J. EDGAR HOOVER
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"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
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-- GROUCHO MARX
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"We are what we pretend to be."
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-- KURT VONNEGUT, JR
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"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
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-- OSCAR WILDE
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"Real wealth can only increase."
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-- R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
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"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
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or becomes true."
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-- JOHN LILLY
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Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
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-- GRAFFITI
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"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
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-- ALBERT EINSTEIN
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"Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it."
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-- TALLULAH BANKHEAD
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"A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms."
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-- GEORGE WALD
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"We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish."
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-- JOHN CULKIN
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I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have
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been from you.
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-- ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
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By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task
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completely overwhelm me.
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-- ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
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"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence
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without civilization in between."
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-- OSCAR WILDE
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"If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
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presumably flunk it."
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-- STANLEY GARN
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"The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls."
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-- FATHER ROBERT F. CAPON
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"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
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men in national government too."
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-- RICHARD M. NIXON
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"We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it."
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-- DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
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"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
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inevitable."
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-- JOHN F. KENNEDY
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"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if
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it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
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-- LEWIS CARROLL
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"It takes a long time to understand nothing."
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-- EDWARD DAHLBERG
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"To know the world one must construct it."
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-- CESARE PAVESE
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"The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out."
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-- TENESSEE WILLIAMS
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"All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
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ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas."
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-- KINGFISH
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"When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results."
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-- CALVIN COOLIDGE
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Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #1
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The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who
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attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and
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on a broader front.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #3
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Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion
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to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they
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are used.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #5
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The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system
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are the key to understanding the type of errors which they
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cannot handle.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #6
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Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
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detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #7
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All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise -
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which is impossible.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #8
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Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
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probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some
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useful work done.
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-- GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #9
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Thoreau's Law:
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If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
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doing you good, you should run for your life.
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Vique's Law:
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A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
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Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
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-- CONFUCIUS
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It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good
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impromptu speech.
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-- MARK TWAIN
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"The unnatural, that too is natural."
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-- GOETHE
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I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
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-- GRAFFITI
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"I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."
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-- SAMUEL GOLDWYN
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I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
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-- GRAFFITI
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"'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability."
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-- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
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"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty
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without any proof."
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-- ASHLEY MONTAGUE
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Ketterling's Law:
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Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
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"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards
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upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
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-- H.L. MENCKEN
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"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
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on the Christian Religion."
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-- GEORGE WASHINGTON
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"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty."
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-- THOMAS JEFFERSON
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"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations."
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-- THOMAS JEFFERSON
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"We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately."
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-- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
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The Swartzberg Test:
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The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
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"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he
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will pick himself up and carry on..."
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-- WINSTON CHURCHILL
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"That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest."
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-- THOREAU
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"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and
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thinking what no one else has thought."
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-- ALBER SZENT-GYORGI
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"Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor."
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-- TOYNBEE
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We have met the enemy and he is us.
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- Walt Kelly (in POGO) -
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"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
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-- HEISENBERG
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If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
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"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it
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takes all you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to
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get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
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-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
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The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin,
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please your Majesty ?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning,", the
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King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end:
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then stop."
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-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
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-- ALBERT EINSTEIN
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|
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"How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for
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somewhere else."
|
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-- R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
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|
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"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
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There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work."
|
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-- Gallagher
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|
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"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the
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dark."
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-- Robert Heinlein
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|
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None of the errors was found.
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Compiler message, Micro Data Base Systems
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|
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"...if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if
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it is a Fact, proof is necessary."
|
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-- Samuel Clemens
|
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|
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"I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes
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everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who
|
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makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the
|
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weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New
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England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make
|
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weather for countries that require a good article, and will take
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their custom elsewhere if they don't get it."
|
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-- Mark Twain
|
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|
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The confidence of ignorance will always overcome
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the indecision of knowledge.
|
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|
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Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
|
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|
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A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
|
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|
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"We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a
|
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very grave danger they will be misinterpreted."
|
||
-- H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.
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|
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Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they
|
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have to take you in.
|
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|
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America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for
|
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one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
|
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|
||
"Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer
|
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to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with
|
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an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then
|
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point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
|
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health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
|
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not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we
|
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find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all
|
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the others who have tried it."
|
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-- MARK TWAIN
|
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|
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How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a program?
|
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Ten. Nine to hold it down, and one to cut its head off.
|
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|
||
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
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they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
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a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
|
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|
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Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
|
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|
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PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands to fill the time available
|
||
for its completion.
|
||
|
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WEILER'S LAW: Nothing is impossible for the man who does not
|
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have to do it himself.
|
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|
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FINAGLE'S LAW: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it
|
||
makes it worse.
|
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|
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THE ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE: By definition, when you are investigating
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the unknown - you do not know what you will find.
|
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|
||
Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology
|
||
1) No action is without side-effects.
|
||
2) Nothing ever goes away.
|
||
3) There is no free lunch.
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
Asked what he thought of Western civilization,
|
||
M. K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea".
|
||
|
||
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured
|
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and then quietly strangled.
|
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|
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"One Galileo in two thousand years is enough."
|
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-- Pope Pius XII
|
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||
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
|
||
|
||
Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom.
|
||
|
||
A man gazing at the stars is at the mercy of every puddle on the road.
|
||
|
||
"I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later."
|
||
-- MILES DAVIS
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
"I never loved another person the way I loved myself."
|
||
-- MAE WEST
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
"Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeprody I would never
|
||
had lit one."
|
||
-- MAXIM OF THE HELLS ANGELS
|
||
|
||
"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night."
|
||
-- WILLIE SUTTON
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
Use it up ... Wear it out.
|
||
Make it do ... Or do without.
|
||
US WORLD WAR II MESSAGE
|
||
|
||
"You can't underestimate the power of fear."
|
||
-- TRICIA NIXON
|
||
|
||
"The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this
|
||
incredible jailbreak."
|
||
-- WAVY GRAVY
|
||
|
||
"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."
|
||
-- DWIGHT D EISENHOWER
|
||
|
||
"College isn't the place to go for ideas."
|
||
-- HELEN 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 appearance of magic."
|
||
-- ARTHUR C CLARKE
|
||
|
||
"Justice is incidental to law and order."
|
||
-- J EDGAR HOOVER
|
||
|
||
"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it."
|
||
-- ABBIE HOFFMAN
|
||
|
||
"How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?"
|
||
-- FIRESIGN THEATER
|
||
|
||
"I could prove God statistically."
|
||
-- GEORGE GALLUP
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
"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
|
||
|
||
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
|
||
-- 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
|
||
|
||
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 proportional 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
|
||
|
||
Fuller's Law of Cosmic Irreversibility:
|
||
1 Pot T == 1 Pot P
|
||
1 Pot P != 1 Pot T
|
||
-- R BUCKMINSTER FULLER
|
||
|
||
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 system 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
|
||
|
||
"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)
|
||
|
||
"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.
|
||
|
||
Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
|
||
-- CONFUCIUS
|
||
|
||
"He hasn't one redeeming vice."
|
||
-- OSCAR WILDE
|
||
|
||
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
|
||
-- GRAFFITI
|
||
|
||
"I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it."
|
||
-- W C FIELDS
|
||
|
||
The Swartzberg Test:
|
||
The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
|
||
|
||
"You don't have to explain something you never said."
|
||
-- CALVIN COOLIDGE
|
||
|
||
"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later
|
||
it adds up to real money.
|
||
EVERETT DIRKSEN
|
||
|
||
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he
|
||
will pick himself up and carry on..."
|
||
-- WINSTON CHURCHILL
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|