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Showing posts from 2008

Terry Pratchett

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

Plato

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Rick Cook

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Ernest Benn

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Joe Martin

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no law against wacking them around a little.

Carl Sagan

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Don Marquis

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.

Anon

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and the rest.

G.H.Hardy

It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Evan Esar

Statistician: A man who believes figures don’t lie, but admits that under analysis some of them won’t stand up either.

Ellen Goodman

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Clive Barnes

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.

Anon

Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn’t seem to be working.

Robert McCloskey

I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Max Beerbohm

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

Evan Esar

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Ogden Nash

People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.

Bruce Grocott

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

Shirley Chisholm

I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish.

Dan Barker

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.

Oscar Wilde

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Jay Leno

I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, ‘I’d like some fries.’ The girl at the counter said, ‘Would you like some fries with that?’

Russell Green

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.

Peter Drucker

In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.

Ronald Reagan

The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Jessica Alba

My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you’re doing.

PJ Plauger

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared.

Mary Chase

I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.

Randall Jarrell

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

Ellen DeGeneres

I don’t understand the sizes anymore. There’s a size zero, which I didn’t even know that they had. It must stand for: ‘Ohhh my God, you’re thin.’

Anon

Men who treat women as helpless and charming playthings deserve women who treat men as delightful and generous bank accounts.

George Bernard Shaw

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man insists on changing the world to suit him. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Abba Eban

History teaches us that men and nations live wisely, once they have exhausted all other options.

Anon

People think computers will keep them from making mistakes. They’re wrong. With computers you make mistakes faster

Robert Frost

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

George F.Will

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Andy Rooney

Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose.

Doug Larson

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

Beryl Pfizer

I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.

Mark Twain

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

Saki

He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Helen Rowland

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.

EB White

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

Willie Tyler

The reason lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time.

Larry Hardiman

The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.

Charles M. Schulz

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?”/ Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

Douglas Noel Adams

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Noel Adams

Man [has] always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much-the wheel, New York, wars and so on-while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man-for precisely the same reason.

Pauline Frederick

When a man gets up to speak, people listen, then look. When a woman gets up, people look; then, if they like what they see, they listen.

Anon

Sure God created man before woman. But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

Anon

There are much easier things in life than finding a good man. Nailing Jell-O to a tree, for instance.

Anon

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.

Anon

Women get the last word in every argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Anon

Women always worry about the things that men forget; men always worry about the things women remember

Germaine Greer

Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?

Homer Simpson

Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose: it’s how drunk you get.

Robert Orben

There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all.

George Bernard Shaw

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Carlin

Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

David Friedman

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Patrick Young

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.

Nora Ephron

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

Mark Twain

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.