Direct Quotes

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop

Question:    If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer:    I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
-- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest

"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime."
-- Thomas Aldrich

According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Altito

When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
-- Laurie Anderson

     We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant...
     I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do...
     "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
     "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway belle's for thee."
     The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt

If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it.
-- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin

Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.
-- Lady Astor to Winston Churchill
Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
-- His reply

The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall

Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black.
-- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"

Outside of the killings, Washington D.C. has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
-- Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry

Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
-- R. S. Barton

I don't know what's wrong with my television set. I was getting C-Span and the Home Shopping Network on the same station. I actually bought a congressman.
-- Bruce Baum

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion.
-- William Baumol

What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"

Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett

God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little... The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty... I do not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at night!
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them.
-- David B. Benepe Jr.

Off we go into the wild blue yonder... AAAAAAAAAAH! BOOOM! CRASH!
-- Jeff Benesch

I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one.
-- James Gordon Bennett

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
-- Jeff Berner

If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet.
-- Ernest Bevin, Former British foreign minister

I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
-- Ed Bluestone

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window.
-- Steve Bluestone

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
-- Humphrey Bogart

The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Bohr

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge

How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?
-- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: Any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"

     "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
     "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"

On Pesticides: "Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway."
-- Othal Brand,
member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane

Documentation is like sex: When it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein

I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch St. Elsewhere, won't scream, "FORGET IT, BLANCHE... IT'S TIME FOR HEE HAW!"
-- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"

Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you.
-- Rita Mae Brown

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
-- William F. Buckley

You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
-- Dagwood Bumstead

Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.
-- Robert Burton

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
-- Samuel Butler

Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
-- Red Buttons

He wasn't much of an actor, he wasn't much of a Governor -- Hell, they had to make him President of the United States. It's the only job he's qualified for!
-- Michael Cain

Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
-- Mariah Carey

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.
-- Jim Carrey

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
-- Thomas Carlyle

When a decision must be made between unity and truth, unity must yield to truth; for it is better to be divided by truth than to be united by error.
-- Edward John Carnell

It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
-- Elizabeth Carpenter

     Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
     The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole".
     Bite the wax tadpole.
     There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
     The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle

When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
-- Jon Carroll

A women broke up with me and sent me pictures of her and her new boyfriend in bed together. Solution? I sent them to her dad.
-- Christopher Case

If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
-- T. Cheatham

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton

If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students.
-- John Ciardi

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

The proposition that intelligence has any long-term survival value remains to be demonstrated.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.
-- Hillary Clinton commenting on release of subpoenaed documents

A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col

Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It's rolling all the way back to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres!
-- Jerry Coleman, Padres radio announcer

Gosh, Dad, that mean's we're not going to any more bowl games.
-- 1991 Jim Colletto, Purdue football coach and
former assistant at Arizona State and Ohio State,
on his 11-year-old son's reaction after he took
the job with the Boilermakers

In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent...
-- John Connally, Secretary of Treasury under Richard Nixon,
in an early seventies speech,
as reported in a contemporary "American Scholar"

E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only to be used for company business.
-- Aaron Conway

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
-- Calvin Coolidge, Former US President

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and
not Gary Cooper.
-- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in
"Gone With The Wind."

     A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
     "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
-- Quentin Crisp

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad. -- Salvador Dali

The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder.
-- Former Chicago Mayor Daley during the infamous 1968 convention

     "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
-- Randy Davis

If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.
-- David Daye

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.
-- Charles De Gaulle, Former French Presient

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries

Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
-- John Dewey

People who never make a mistake end up by never doing anything worthwhile - when they do not end up in institutions. A rigid insistence on strict criteria is the road to scientific catatonia.
-- Solomon Diamond

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
-- Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"

Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
-- Bo Diddley

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
-- John Diefenbaker

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
-- David Dinkins, former New York City Mayor,
answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes

A billion here, a of billion there -- sooner or later, it adds up to real money.
-- Everett McKinley Dirksen, US Senator (R-Illnois)

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
-- Walt Disney

An Animated Cartoon Theology:
      1.     People are animals.
      2.     The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain.
      3.     Life is antagonistic to the living.
      4.     The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched,
          burned, bombed, and plucked for music.
      5.     The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart destroyed
          by their own cunning.
      6.     The small are tortured by the large and the large
          destroyed by their own momentum.
      7.     We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our
          illusion supports us.
-- E. L. Doctorow, from "The Book of Daniel"

The internet is a great way to get on the net.
-- Bob Dole, 1996 Republican Presidential Candidate

...never write device drivers while on acid!
-- M. J. Dominus

What's worth doing is worth doing for money.
-- Joseph Donohue

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; ...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne

Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd have been a wagon...
-- James Doohan as Mr. Scott in "The Search for Spock"

A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police.
-- Mr. Dooley

What did you do? Wake up this morning and say, "Today, I'm going to ruin a man's life!!"
-- Michael Douglas, "Romancing the Stone"

But soon, soon, soon... the world will be a better place, with meadows and bunnies and fiber optics in every home.
-- Tom Dowdy, Apple Computer

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
-- Peter F. Drucker

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
-- Sir William Drummond, "Academical Questions"

Money can be lost... beauty normally fades with the years... health may fail or some disease can strike... friends usually vanish, perhaps die. Only memories remain for as long as you live. So, live that your memories will make you glad rather than sad.
-- George Dubow

Being a scientist does not disqualify a person from being an intelligent citizen.
-- Lee A. DuBridge

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

I guess we all know who's the real wizard under the sheets.
-- David Duke, referring to Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles H. Duell,
Commissioner, U. S. office of Patents, 1899

Was einmal gedacht wurde kann nicht mehr zurueckgenommen wrden!
[What has been thought, can not be taken back anymore]
-- Friederich Duerrenmatt, "The Physicists," 1962

How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 107, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs

All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait and hope.
-- Alexandre Dumas the Elder

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
-- David Dunham

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant

He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.
-- Lou Duva, Veteran boxing trainer, on the spartan
training regimen of heavyweight Andrew Golota, 1996

This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of World War I. These aren't evil men -- some of them aren't even stupid.
-- G. Dyer, in "War"

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
-- Dykstra

Ok, so just what is a bessel function?
-- Rob Earhart, as Intermediate Optics goes flying over his head

Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.
-- Aubrey Eben

That's the nature of research -- you don't know what in hell you're doing.
-- "Doc" Edgerton

I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
-- Dave Edison

They can't fire me because my family buys too many tickets.
-- LaVell Edwards, BYU football coach and one of 14 children, 1986

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Former U.S. President

How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
-- Elliot, "E.T."

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

Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas.
-- Keppel Enderbery, Former Australian cabinet minister

The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from
the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon,
appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz

     Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.
-- Bob Ettinger

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides

Bring the little ones unto me, and I will get a good price for them.
-- Dr. Fegg's Encyclopeadia of "All World Knowledge"

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

I'm not allowed to comment on lousy officiating.
-- Jim Finks, New Orleans Saints G.M.,
when asked after a loss what he thought of the refs, 1986

Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC

...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.
-- Robert Firth

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote

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

And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
-- Sigmund Freud

There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
-- Merrick Furst

Innovation is hard to schedule.
-- Dan Fylstra

I'm an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
-- Gallagher

If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the plantation and go home.
-- Eugene P. Gallagher

Western Civilization: I think it would be a good idea.
-- Gandhi

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
-- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. Paul Getty

Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
-- William Gilbert

The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way

The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it.
-- Jackie Gleason

If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight.
-- George Gobel

If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put down the video camera and come help me.
-- Bobcat Goldthwait

I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
-- Barry Goldwater

What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism. It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes, women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
-- Susan Gordon

For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
-- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.

...But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"

The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs.
-- E. Grebenik

A CONS is an object which cares.
-- Bernie Greenberg

I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"

A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries

The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
-- Alexander Haig

Queen Elizabeth II has had some year. There was Andrew's separation, Fergie's nude photos, Anne's divorce, Di's love tapes, Charles' philandering and Edward should come flying out of the closet any day now. The queen never should have asked Rose Kennedy how to raise kids.
-- Argus Hamilton,
Oklahoman Newspaper, November 30, 1992

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
-- Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960

The Crown is full of it!
-- Nate Harris, 1775

Wish - To end all the killing in the world
Hobbies - Hunting and fishing
-- from personal statistics of California Angel
Bryan Harvey, flashed on the scoreboard at Anaheim Stadium

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman

An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert

     An actor once said, "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!"
     To which Oliver Herford responded, "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!"
-- Oliver Herford

Opinions are like assholes -- everyone's got one, but nobody wants to look at the other guy's.
-- Hal Hickman

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

Calvin: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
Hobbes,
from "Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman

     "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship.
     "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: We have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of unknown intelligence. Apart from the unknowns, everything else is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover

Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- F. M. Hubbard

When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard

In elementary school, in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic? Do tall people burn slower?
-- Warren Hutcherson

Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon

As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
-- Charles Hurst

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.
-- Henrick Ibson

They who drink beer will think beer.
-- Washington Irving

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
-- Alfred Jarry

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, "Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west."
-- Richard Jeni

Neither you Simon, nor the 50,000, nor the Romans, nor the Jews, nor Judas, nor the 12, nor the priests, nor the scribes, nor Jerusalem itself, understand what power is, understand what glory is, understand at all.
-- Jesus, "Simon Zealotes" from Jesus Christ Superstar

So we went to Atari and said, "Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you." And they said, "No." So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, "Hey, we don't need you. You haven't even got through college yet."
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get
Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's
personal computer.

There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex!
-- Billy Joel

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."
-- Jake Johansen

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson

Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
-- Samuel Johnson

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- F. P. Jones

Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce

     Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian... To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said:
         "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
[Editor's Note: Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church.]

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel

I don't do drugs anymore 'cause I find I get the same effect just by standing up really fast.
-- Johnathan Katz

Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

I was going to write myself in, but I was afraid I'd get shot.
-- Lincoln Kennedy, Oakland Raiders tackle,
on his decision not to vote, 1996

What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi

If I had a pointer big enough, I could move the world.
-- (allegedly) Brain W. Kernighan, the Father of C

What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875

The fault lies not with putting a fool in charge, the fault lies in leaving him in charge.
-- Ghengis Khan

We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.
-- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job is to enforce the law and fight crime.
-- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan

Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk.
-- Stephen King, 3/8/90

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Kipling

I would love to speak a foreign language but I can't. So I grew hair under my arms instead.
- Sue Kolinsky

We have the most [thorough] test guy in the world... [I showed him
this program and he asked,] "but Rob, what if time runs backward?"
-- Rob Kolstad, From Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego

It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
-- Alexander Korda

God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-- Kronecker

I knew that I was doing research when I spent more time thinking about programs then I did writing them.
-- Bradley M. Kuhn

It's basically the same, just darker.
-- Alan Kulwicki, stock car racer,
on racing Saturday nights
as opposed to Sunday afternoons, 1991

     When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
     In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty

Unfair animal names: tsetse fly, bullhead, booby, duck-billed platypus, sapsucker, Clarence
-- Gary Larson

He wants Texas back.
-- Tommy Lasorda, Dodger manager,
asked what terms Mexican-born pitching sensation
Fernando Valenzuela might settle for
in his upcoming contract negotiations, 1981

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana... The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are.
-- Matt Lauer on NBC's Today show, August 22

I told him, "Son, what is it with you: Is it ignorance or apathy?" He said, "Coach, I don't know and I don't care."
-- Frank Layden, Utah Jazz president, on a former player, 1991

Advertising: The science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
-- Stephen Leacock

She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

     The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
     "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
     "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
     Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"

I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
-- Carol Leifer

I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo

Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant

But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"

Nixon has been sitting in the White House while George McGovern has
been exposing himself to the people of the United States.
-- Frank Licht, then governor of Rhode Island,
campaigning for McGovern in 1972

Why is it that there are so many more horses' asses than there are horses?
-- G. Gordon Liddy

It's not hard to tell we was poor -- when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.
-- George Lindsey

In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter

The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful..
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.
-- Janet Long

Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."
-- Russell Long

No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Boothe Luce

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.
-- Bill Maher

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-- Dean Martin

It's bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew W. Mathis

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy

I'm going to send the injured reserve players out for the toss next time.
-- Mike McCormack, coach of the hapless Baltimore Colts
after the team's co-captain, offensive guard Robert Pratt,
pulled a hamstring running onto the field for the

I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
-- Paul McCracken

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.
-- J. P. McEvoy

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
-- George McGovern

When a man calls an animal vicious that usually means it will try to protect itself when he tries to kill it.
-- Rick McIntyre, "A Society of Wolves"

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay

The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat.
-- John McNulty

I'm a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I'll forget.
-- Michael McShane

I'm not against the blacks and a lot of the good blacks will attest to that.
-- Evan Mecham, then governor of Arizona

[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
-- Edwin Meese, III

Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
-- John Mendoza

Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz

Don't be humble, you're not that great.
-- Golda Meir

Son, looks to me like you're spending too much time on one subject.
-- Shelby Metcalf, basketball coach at Texas A&M,
recounting what he told a player who received
four F's and one D, 1987

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I just broke up with someone and the last thing she said to me was, "You'll never find anyone like me again!" I'm thinking, "I should hope not! If I don't want you, why would I want someone like you?"
-- Larry Miller

I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky

You know how to tell if the teacher is hung over? Movie Day.
-- Jay Mohr

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God... I could be eating a slow learner.
-- Lynda Montgomery

I will not be presenting this talk in rap.
-- Arch Mott, From Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego

Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine.
-- David Moulton

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse

Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy

Being stoned on marijuana isn't very different from being stoned on gin.
-- Ralph Nadar

I drink to make other people interesting.
-- George Jean Nathan

My sister's expecting a baby and I don't know if I'm going to be an uncle or an aunt.
-- Chuck Nevitt, North Carolina State basketball player,
explaining to Coach Jim Valvano why he appeared
nervous at practice, 1982

Crime does not pay... as well as politics.
A. E. Newman

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: Duh.
-- Conan O'Brien

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry

After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P. J. O'Rourke

Tell me, do they still sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt?
-- Odo, "ST:DS9"

The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Olivier

Half this game is ninety percent mental.
-- Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies manager

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine

He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS

Whenever anyone says, "Theoretically," they really mean, "Not really."
-- Dave Parnas

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
-- Petronius, 210 B.C. Greek philosopher

Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
-- Emo Phillips

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
-- Pablo Picasso

What do people mean when they say the computer went down on me?
-- Marilyn Pittman

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
-- Plutarch

He treats us like men. He lets us wear earrings.
-- Torrin Polk, University of Houston receiver,
on his coach, John Jenkins, 1991

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan

My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That's how she learned how to swim. I said, "Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim."
-- Paula Poundstone

A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
-- Herbert Prochnow

I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!
-- Monty Python

I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians don't believe in astrology.
-- James R. F. Quirk

"Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look like you..."
-- Gilda Radner

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed

Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Rilke

My grandfather's a little forgetful, but he likes to give me advice. One day, he took me aside and left me there.
-- Ron Richards

The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.
-- Philadelphia Mayor and Police Chief Frank Rizzo

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breed sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
-- Tom Robbins

When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the money is.
-- Robespierre

Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography.
-- Paul Rodriguez

Life is what happened while you were making other plans.
-- Gamble Rogers

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers

What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.
-- Dan Rome

We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-- Andy Rooney

How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
-- Mark Roop-Kharasch

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

One player was lost because he broke his nose. How do you go about getting a nose in condition for football?
-- Darrell Royal, Texas football coach,
asked if the abnormal number of Longhorn
injuries this season resulted from
poor physical conditioning, 1966

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell

If you can't make the putts and can't get the man in from second
on the bottom of the ninth, you're not going to win enough football
games in this league, and that's the problem we had today.
-- Sam Rutigliano, Cleveland Browns coach, on why his team lost

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner... sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan

I was in a supermarket and I saw Paul Newman's face on salad dressing and spaghetti sauce... I thought he was missing.
-- Bob Saget

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger

It is the business of little minds to shrink.
-- Carl Sandburg

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro

Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words

I am honored today to begin my first term as the Governor of
Baltimore-that is Maryland.
-- William Donald Schaefer, first inaugural address

We should not worry about what happens when computers pass the Turing test, but rather what happens when humans fail.
-- Dmitri Schoeman

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
-- Norm Schryer

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling

To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy, inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence: precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel, uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar, well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very secure ecological niche.
-- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"

     God built a compelling sex drive into every creature, no matter what style of fucking it practiced. He made sex irresistible pleasurable, wildly joyous, and free from fears. He made it innocent merriment.
     Needless to say, fucking was an immediate smash hit. Everyone agreed, from aardvarks to Zebras. All the jolly animals -- lions and lambs, rhinoceroses and gazelles, skylarks and lobsters, even insects, though most of them fuck only once in a lifetime -- fucked along innocently and merrily for hundreds of millions of years. maybe they were dumb animals, but they knew a good thing when they had one.
-- Alan Sherman, "Rape of the A*P*E*"

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
-- Brooke Shields, Anti-smoking spokesperson

I like having a machine called 'elvis' on the network because that way, I can say "ping elvis" and have it come back with "elvis is alive."
-- Carl Shipley, From Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego

Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff

For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with computers altogether?
-- Jehan Shuman

[Making sure his mike was working] Someone in the back row, raise your hand.
-- Steve Shumway, From Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego

It's C... it reads just like English!
-- Deane Sibol

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment.
The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the
unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
-- Ray Simard

The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.
-- Roger Simon

You know, we really ought to do accounting on the Unix boxes. It should be a ten-minute hack...
-- John Simonson, quoting Former group head,
at the Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego from 1987

The ad in the paper said, "Big Sale. Last Week." Why advertise? I already missed it. They're just rubbing it in.
-- Yakov Smirnoff

Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.
-- Dennis Smith

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King

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

I drank WHAT?
-- Socrates

But the real tragedy was that 15 hadn't been colored yet.
-- Steve Spurrier, Florida football coach,
telling Gator fans that a fire at Auburn's football dorm
had destroyed 20 books, 1991

A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
-- Professor Steiner

The president has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
-- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Don't eat pork. I'm sorry, what was that last one? Don't eat pork. God has spoken. Is that the word of God or is that pigs trying to outsmart everybody?
-- Jon Stewart

     On one occasion a student burst into his office. "Professor Stigler, I don't believe I deserve this F you've given me."
     To which Stigler replied, "I agree, but unfortunately it is the lowest grade the University will allow me to award."
-- Professor Stigler

I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vaccuum cleaners.
-- Jeff Stilson

At this point in the project, every day we lose is... basically... another day lost.
-- Evan R. Stoner

Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code.
-- Dave Storer

Gentlemen, you can't fight here, this is a War Room!
-- Dr. Strangelove

After finding no qualified candidates for the position of
principal, the school department is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.
-- Philip Streifer, superintendent of schools,
Barrington Rhode Island

This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.
-- Steve Strickland

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer

I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are
vastly underpolluted.
-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank,
explaining why we should export toxic wastes
to Third World countries

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publibious Syrus

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"

Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen

The reason that God was able to create the world in seven days is he didn't have to worry about the installed base.
-- Enzo Torresi

Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tsu

In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers," and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried. And DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data, Stack, and the instructions, they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt...
-- Rico Tudor

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

I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate

Howard Cosell's biggest protrusion is his asshole.
-- John Valby

You cloned yourself? I'm beside myself with envy.
-- Mark K Vallevand

He's trying to take the decision out of the hands of twelve honest
men and give it to 435 Congressmen!
-- Representative Charles Vanik of Ohio,
when he heard that the indicted
Spiro Agnew was asking to have his
corruption case tried by the House
instead of in a regular court

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal

Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh

Every time a baseball player grabs his crotch, it makes him spit. That's why you should never date a baseball player.
-- Marsha Warfield

The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol

Who the &*#% wants to hear actors talk?
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
-- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
-- John Wayne, movie star and social activist

As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert

You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
-- J. Wellington Wells

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
-- General William Westmoreland

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White

...at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
-- Robert Wilensky of the University of California

Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.
-- Kaiser Wilhelm

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949

We can't win at home. We can't win on the road. As general manager, I just can't figure out where else to play.
-- Pat Williams, Orlando Magic general manager,
on his team's 7-27 record, 1992

You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax, tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough.
-- Pearl Williams

When you look at Prince Charles, don't you think that someone in the Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?
-- Robin Williams

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tenessee Williams

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson

We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington

Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell

Are you any relation to your brother Marv?
-- Leon Wood, New Jersey Nets guard,
to Steve Albert, Nets TV commentator

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

The doctor says he has to amputate all of me.
-- Steve Wright

Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
-- Swami X

Gorbachev's idea to combine socialism with market economy is as impossible as mating a viper with a hedgehog.
-- Boris Yeltsin

We watched with envy on television as American solders gave out packets of Marlboro cigarettes to Iraqi prisoners of war. May of us have to work an entire shift underground to afford on packet of Marlboro. I want to surrender to the Americans.
-- Sergei Yevshin, a coal minor on strike in the Ukraine

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young

Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.
-- Catherine Zandonella

     "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
     "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
     "I've never done anything illegal before."
     "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
     "Don't say yes until I finish talking."
-- Darryl F. Zanuck

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together...
-- Carl Zwanzig

Those Macintoshes aren't the cute little boxes you think they are.
-- Elizabeth Zwicky, From Usenix/LISA Conference in San Diego