Laws of Computer Programming:
1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
6) The value of a program is porportional to the weight of its output.
7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
   programmer who must maintain it.
8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English,
   and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
-- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2

Gilb's Laws of Reliability:
1) Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
3) The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who
   attacks a systrem is that the fool attacks unpredictably and
   on a broader front.
5) Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion
   to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they
   are used.
6) The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system
   are the key to understanding the type of errors which they
   cannot handle.
7) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
   detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
8) All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise
   which is impossible.
9) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
   probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some
   useful work done.
-- Tom Gilb

If it takes one man and one woman nine months to make a baby;
putting nine men on the job gets it done no faster.
-- von Karmann
 
But, depending on how friendly the woman is with the nine men,
it could be a whole lot more fun.
-- Tim Tobin
 
And she has a much better chance of getting pregnant!
- Herm

How to Determine Which Programming Language You're Using:
 
The proliferation of modern programming languages which seem to
have stolen countless features from each other sometimes makes it
difficult to remember which language you're using.  This guide is
offered as a public service to help programmers in such dilemmas.
 
C - You shoot yourself in the foot.
 
Assembly - You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk.  The system
administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot.  After a moment of
contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then
hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.
 
C++ - You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot
them all in the foot.  Providing emergency medical care is impossible
since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just
pointing at others and saying, "that's me, over there."
 
Ada - If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United
States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of
a firing squad, and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at his feet."
 
Pascal - But the bullet is of the wrong type, and the gun jams.
 
   BEGIN
     AimGun;  {8-line procedure}
     PullTrigger;  {2-line procedure}
     DamageControlAndDebugging;  {2000-line, 8-hour procedure}
   END;
 
Modula/2 - After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
in the language, you shoot yourself in the head.
 
sh, csh, etc. - You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you
spend five hours reading manual pages before giving up.  You then
shoot the computer and switch to C.
 
Smalltalk - You spend so much time playing with the graphics and
windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away
your workstation, and makes you develop in COBOL on a character
terminal.
 
APL - You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't
remember enough linear algebra to understand what the hell happened.
 
FORTRAN - You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out
of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat.  If you run out of
bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-processing
ability.
 
Algol - You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket.  The musket is
esthetically fascinating, and the wound baffles the adolescent medic
in the emergency room.
 
COBOL - USEing a COLT45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER, and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN
to HOLSTER.  Check whether shoelace needs to be retied.
 
BASIC - Shoot self in foot with water pistol.  On big systems,
continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.
 
PL/I - You consume all available system resources, including all the
offline bullets.  The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its
size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes, and drops the original one on your foot.
 
SNOBOL - You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to
be a bullet.  The act of shooting the original foot then changes your
hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).
 
lisp - You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...
 
scheme - You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...
...but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.
 
English - You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.
 
-- Compiled from USENET

With such a large selection of programming languages, it can be difficult
to get to know them well enough to choose one for a particular project.
Most people, however, have a fairly good idea of how various automobiles
compare.  So, in order to assist those trying to choose a language, we
have prepared a chart that matches programming languages with comparable
automobiles.
 
Assembler - A Formula I race car.  Very fast, but difficult to drive
and expensive to maintain.
 
FORTRAN II - A Model T Ford.  Once it was king of the road.
 
FORTRAN IV - A Model A Ford.
 
FORTRAN 77 - A six cylinder Ford Fairlane with standard transmission
and no seat belts.
 
COBOL - A delivery van.  It's bulky and ugly, but it does the work.
 
BASIC - A second-hand Rambler with a rebuilt engine and patched
upholstery.  Your dad bought it for you to learn to drive.  You'll
ditch the car as soon as you can afford a new one.
 
PL/I - A Cadillac convertible with automatic transmission, a two-tone
paint job, whit-wall tires, chrome exhaust pipes, and fuzzy dice hanging
in the windshield.
 
C - A black Firebird, the all-macho car.  Comes with optional seat
belts (lint) and optional fuzz buster (escape to assembler).
 
ALGOL 60 - An Austin Mini.  Boy, that's a small car!
 
PASCAL - A Volkswagen Beetle.  It's small but sturdy.
Was once popular with intellectuals.
 
Modula II - A Volkswagen Rabbit with a trailer hitch.
 
ALGOL 68 - An Aston Martin.  An impressive car, but not just anyone
can drive it.
 
LISP - An electric car.  It's simple but slow.
Seat belts are not available.
 
PROLOG - A prototype concept-car.
 
LUCID - Abolish cars and install moving sidewalks through the city
(LUCID is a data-flow language).
 
SMALLTALK - Put all the buildings on wheels and move them around the city.
 
MAPLE/MACSYMA - All-terrain vehicles.  Will operate on the road
(integer and floating-point numbers), off the road (rational numbers),
and in the swamp (symbolic expressions).
 
FORTH - A go-cart.
 
LOGO - A kiddie's replica of a Rolls Royce.  Comes with a real engine
and a working horn.
 
APL - A double-decker bus.  It takes rows and columns of passengers to
the same place at the same time.  But, it drives only in reverse gear
and is instrumented in Greek.
 
ADA - An army-green Mercedes-Benz staff car.  Power steering, power
brakes, and automatic transmission are all standard.  No other colors
or options are available.  If it's good enough for the generals, it's
good enough for you.  Manufacturing delays due to difficulty reading
the design specifications are starting to clear up.  Has trouble
getting up to speed due to all the armor plating.
 
From "The C Users' Group Newsletter", March '87,
by David Salomon & David Rosenbluth

Found near a dumpster full of Domino's Pizza boxes, written on a
crumpled twinky wrapper with a grease pen...
 
Applications programming is a race between software engineers,
who strive to produce idiot-proof programs, and the Universe,
which strives to produce bigger idiots.
-- Software Engineers' saying
 
So far the Universe is winning.
-- Applications Programmers' saying

Flon's Law: There is not now, nor will there ever be, any programming
language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code.

LISP = Lots of Irritating Stupid Parathesis
-- Richard Thiebaud

I thought [Microsoft] Windows *WAS* a virus...
-- Plez
  
Well, lets see...  Windows eats up hugh amounts of disk space, causes
your computer to perform at a horribly slow pace, gobbles RAM like it
was beer at the stadium, and does nothing particularly useful.
Hmmm.  Yep, sounds like a virus to me!
-- Brian Thomas

FAX machines are nothing more than modems for idiots...
-- Glenn Taylor

COMPUTER CONSULTANT:  A professional manual-reader.  Someone who
makes a living reading computer manuals for people who are either
too stupid, lazy or impatient to read their own manuals.
-- Glenn Taylor

IDIOT:  Anyone who asks a question, then argues with the answer.
-- Glenn Taylor

TECHNOLOGY - THE GREAT EQUALIZER?
  
Some people have this silly notion that eventually technology will
provide a computer (or some other device) that is so advanced and so
intellegent that it will somehow be able to compensate for the inept
operator.  The operator will only have to "wave" his/her hand over the
keyboard to simulate the act of typing/controlling the machine and the
machine will respond accordingly.  The computer will know exactly what
to do, even if the operator doesn't -- and it will perform all of its
tasks flawlessly.  The owner will never have to read boring computer
manuals again...
  
They also think that such a device will be priced within reach of all
those who do not have the desire nor the patience to learn.  And they
say it's just a matter of time.
  
Let me say this... While it is true that technology has provided society
with tools of emmense power and leverage, it's not enough to just have
wonderful tools!  All tools require some degree of knowledge and skill
in order to utilize them effectively.  And the only way to aquire know-
ledge is through the hard work and effort of study, experimentation,
trial and error.  Those who put forth the effort to educate themselves
will *ALWAYS* have the edge over those who choose not to.  It has been
this way for eons and is not likely to change.
  
Technology will never be a substitute for knowledge!  You will never be
able to "buy" knowledge like one buys a wrench or computer.  The simple
act of owning a new tool will not magically imbue the owner with the
knowledge necessary to effectively use that tool, nor will it command
the respect of others.  Lazyness and ignorance will never be commodities
valued by society.
-- Glenn Taylor

When things aren't working out...
 Don't try to change the wind.
  Change the sail instead.

There are those who know the price of
everything, and the value of nothing...

If you can't do something right, don't do it at all!
-- Glenn Taylor (my motto)

Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity.
-- General George S. Patton

"The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after
the sweetness of a cheap price is forgotten."
-- Confusious

I explained to him that he had the wrong idea.  The purpose of welfare
systems is not to help poor people.  If the object were to help poor
people, then that would be most surely done by giving money to poor
people.  But that is not the idea, as our tax code proves.  If you give
twenty dollars to someone on the street, there is not a way in the world
you can deduct that donation from your taxes.  To claim a deduction you
must give the money to an organization that employs clerks and adminis-
trators and social workers and that, more than likely, puts nothing
material into the hands of the poor, or if it does provide some material
benifit, those benifits are not as much as a dime to the dollar of the
original donation.  When the agency makes an accounting of the good it
has done the poor, it will count the money it spent on paying social
workers to hold the hands of the poor the same as money, if any, spent
on bread.  The purpose of welfare systems is to provide jobs for social
workers and bureaucrats.  This is, I said I supposed, a sort of good in
itself.  I told Billy he should be grateful to have a job in the poverty
industry, but to ask that such a job be meaningful is to ask too much.
Somehow he did not find these remarks consoling.
  
-- Lars Eighner from "Travels with Lizbeth - Three Years on the Road
   and on the Streets"

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  (Phillip Glass: EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH)

Nothing is true.  Everything is permitted.
-- Hassan I. Sabbah

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

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.  But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Southern California Oracle

The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
-- H P Lovecraft

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey

It's not the size of the ship, it's the size of the waves.
-- Little Richard

I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
-- Mae West

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
-- Sigmund Freud

When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I've
never tried before.
-- Mae West

Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeopardy, I never
would have lit one.
-- Maxim of the Hells Angels

It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night.
-- Willie Sutton

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
-- Billy Rose

The rich will do anything for the poor, but get off their backs.
-- Karl Marx

When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
-- Al Capone

Anything anybody can say about America is true.
-- Emmett Grogan

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land
in Los Angeles.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
-- Ronald Reagan

He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
-- South African saying

Use it up ... Wear it out.
Make it do ... Or do without.
-- US World War II message

You can't underestimate the power of fear.
-- Tricia Nixon

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
-- Wavy Gravy

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- Buckminster Fuller

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

You smash it, and I'll build around it.
-- John Lennon

College isn't the place to go for ideas.
-- Hellen Keller

Politicians should read science fiction,
not westerns and detective stories.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

America, how can you write a holy litany in your silly mood?
-- Allen Ginsberg

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image.  Therefore, I have
to beat somebody.
-- Richard M. Nixon

Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

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

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx

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

Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
-- Pink Floyd

Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be
when I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker

How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
-- Firesign Theater

I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
-- Oscar Wilde

We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong
but thats the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon

I could prove God statistically.
-- George Gallup

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein

Real wealth can only increase.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Anyone can hate.  It costs to love.
-- John Williamson

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
-- John Lilly

Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
-- Graffiti

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
-- Albert Eistein

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

Burnt Sienna.  That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
-- Ken Weaver

We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
-- John Culkin

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because
I may be going in the wrong direction.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually
let the task completely overwhelm me.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first,
and call whatever you hit the target.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence
without civilization in between.
-- Oscar Wilde

If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization
would presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn

The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
-- Father Robert F. Capon

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If we make peaceful revolution impossible,
we make violent revolution inevitiable.
-- John F. Kennedy

"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic."
-- Lewis Carroll

To know the world, one must construct it.
-- Cesare Pavese

The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
-- Tenessee Williams

All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in
a peach orchard, ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish

He who wonders, discovers that this in itself, is wonder.
-- M. C. Escher

Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
If at first you don't suceed, transform your data set.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Erlich

If A equals success, then the formula is:  A= X + Y + Z
X is work.  Y is play.  Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein

Sex is hereditary.  If your parents never had it, chances are
you won't either.
-- Joseph Fischer

Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is
damn near zero.
-- David Ellis

Frouds Law:
A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the
fuse by blowing first.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty

Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he
encounters needs pounding.
-- Abraham Kaplan

Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there
is some ordinance under which you can be booked.
-- Robert D. Sprecht (RAND Corp.)

Thoreau's Law:
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
doing you good, you should run for your life.

Vique's Law:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then
the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
-- Gerald Weinberg

Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
-- Confucius

Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
-- Book of Proverbs

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain

The unnatural, that too is natural.
-- Goethe

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
-- Samuel Goldwyn

He hasn't one redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde

Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of
heartbeats and I'll be damned if I'm going to use up mine running up
and down a street.
-- Neil Armstrong (to Walter Cronkite)

"You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses],  "But I forgave you
that doubt.  You doubted your own self and failed to believe in your
own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also.  But you lost
faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities of Human
Nature.  THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for you to enter the
Promised Land."
-- The Midrash

'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-- Ashley Montague

Birth, Copulation, and Death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.
-- T. S. Elliot

Make no little plans.  They have no Magic to stir Men's blood.
-- D. B. Hudson

Any new venture goes through the following stages:
  
1.  Enthusiasm
2.  Complication
3.  Disillusionment
4.  Search for the guilty, 
    punishment of the innocent.
5.  Decoration of those who did nothing!
  
- Author Unknown

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'....  Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover.
-- Bill Gates, Pres., Microsoft, Inc.

Eight Things your computer won't do:
(1) It won't save you money.
(2) It won't make your organization run right.
(3) It won't solve every problem.
(4) It won't run itself.
(5) It won't always be right.
(6) It won't meet all its own needs.
(7) It won't protect itself.
(8) It won't become obsolete.
-- J. Makower

Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee...
that will do them in.

Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of important
operations one can do without thinking about them.

Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.

Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B',
'A' is most likely a scoundrel.
-- H. L. Mencken

Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you're given,
The less you lead, the more you're driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.
-- Ogden Nash

Giving money and power to government is like 
giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P. J. O'Rourke

The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian Religion.
-- George Washington

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity
has been upon trial.  What has been its fruits?  More or less, in all
places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in
the laity,; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-- James Madison

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
-- Thomas Jefferson

We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.
-- Thomas Jefferson

We are taxed twice as much by our idleness.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
-- Pat Paulsen

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Camus

I don't drink water.  Fish fuck in it.
-- W. C. Fields

Six years for possession of a cigarette?... I got six months
for possession of a deadly weapon!
-- cartoon by S. Harris

The Swartzberg Test:
The validity of a science is its ability to predict.

There is no choice before us.  Either we must succeed in providing
the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries
civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements.
We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward
striving of the human race.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human
systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable....
We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch.
Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design,
no interest in whether or not we grapple with it.  But we cannot be
indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence
has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can
explore and understand and utilize it.  To turn back now would be
to deny our history, our capabilities.
-- James A. Michener

What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon,
to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a
continent?  In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong
and I concluded that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in
Neil's view, the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of
American life.  First, a base of technology must exist from which to do
the thing to be done.  Second, a period of national uneasiness about
America's place in the scheme of human activities must exist.  Third,
some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national attention
upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate and wise leader
must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and
action the great thing to be accomplished.  The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions....  The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear.  We must begin to create the tools of leadership which
they, and thier young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and
upward.
-- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt, Sen., New Mexico

I do not like to have my managers think they are a special breed of
people elected by God to lead stupid people to do miraculous things.
-- Akio Morita, Chairman of Sony Corporation

What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work?  A stick!
-- Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian

To err is human, to compute divine.  Trust your computer,
but not its programmer.
-- Morris Kingston

I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself,
but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head.
-- George Wallace

You don't have to explain something you never said.
-- Calvin Coolidge

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
-- Bismarck

A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.
-- Everett Dirksen

The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato
chip market.  Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food
market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose.
-- James Finke, Pres., Commodore Int'l Ltd. (1982)

I like a man who grins when he fights.
-- Winston Churchill

There are a lot of lies going around... and half of them are true.
-- Winston Churchill

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but
most times he will pick himself up and carry on...
-- Winston Churchill

God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday.
-- William Bragg

Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die.
-- John W. Campbell

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-- Thoreau

Life is not one thing after another...
it's the same damn thing over and over!

The meek will inherit the Earth...
The rest of us will go to the stars.

Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.

Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe,
and he'll believe you...  Tell him that a bench has wet paint
upon it and he'll have to touch it to be sure.

Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has
seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi

Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.
-- "Oh, Lucky Man"

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.

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united
with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
-- Goya

TAXES?  Only the little people pay taxes!
-- Leona Helmsley

Some people like my advice so much that they
frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
-- Gordon R. Dickson

Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor.
-- Toynbee

We have met the enemy and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly (in POGO)

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians,
who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
-- M. Somerset Maugham

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
-- Bert Lantz

The one charm of marriage is that it
makes a life of deception a neccessity.
-- Oscar Wilde

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
-- Voltaire

IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' to
destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and
covers it with leaves.  It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby.  Then
it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all this gold, get over here fast.'
As soon as the competitor approaches the pot, he falls into the pit.
-- John C. Dvorak

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
-- Heisenberg

It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling
to get adapted to my kind of fooling.
-- R. Frost

Confound these ancestors... They've stolen our best ideas!
-- Ben Jonson

Did you ever feel as if your mind were starting to erode?
Ever been to Utah?
-- from the film, Repo Man

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
-- Dave Barry

In the beginning, there were hot lumps.
Cold and lonely, they whirled noiselessly
through the black holes of space.
-- Firesign theater

Hey man, he broke the President!
-- Firesign theater

When a girl admits she's had a checkered career, it's your move...

How happy is the moron,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My God, perhaps I am!

Life is complex.  It consists of real and imaginary parts.

And isn't that the greatest fear of all...
To be ready with the answers...
To questions that no one asks any more... ?
-- Merrit Malloy

The quality of life didn't matter much...
There was so much of it.
-- Merrit Malloy

Compromise is simply when we change the answer to fit the question.
-- Merrit Malloy

I don't know what it's like
To be old...
But I think...
It's living long enough
To make a joke of the things
That were once
Breaking your heart...
-- Merrit Malloy

Love is proud of itself...
It leaks out of us
Even with the tightest security
-- Merrit Malloy

Why is it that we always remember that people forget;
But we always forget that they remember?
-- Merrit Malloy

Somehow when you eat alone, food is more expensive.
-- Merrit Malloy

National Velvet was only a movie.
And life ... well
Life used to be a magazine.
-- Merrit Malloy

You thought it would be easy, so the truth eluded you.
-- Julie Snow

I live in dreams, and when I can
I go to sleep, and there I am
And there you are.
-- Janis Ian

Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is much farther away.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the school of genius.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

Good friends and fish stink after 3 days.
-- Ben Franklin

Help fight continental drift.

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.

In jealousy, there is self-love, not love.

It is impossible to thoroughly enjoy idleness
unless one has plenty of work to do.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire

Nice guys get sick.

Someone you reject today will reject you tomorrow.

To iterate is human, to recurse is divine.

When you become used to never being alone,
you may consider yourself Americanized.

If there were no such thing as gravity, the earth would fly off into space.

The only way out is through.
-- Julie Snow

If I were a poet
I would write a sonnet
It would say "I love you",
Your name would be on it.
-- Kermit the Frog

Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the
universe it shall rejoin its friend.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be alert -- This country needs lerts.

Insanity is hereditary,
You get it from your children.

Oops, DECked again.

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

A rolling stone gathers momentum.

Ancient Chinese Curse:  May you live in interesting times.

Ancient Chinese Curse:  May all your wishes be granted.

Organization is the enemy of improvisation.

!lanimret siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox.

Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics:
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to
recan them is to use a larger can.

Any given program, once running, is obsolete.

A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

Bye's First Law of Model Railroading:
Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of
faults encountered is proportional to the number of viewers.

Wolfgang's Third Law: It can't work.

If you put your supper dish to your ear
you can hear the sounds of a restaurant.
-- Snoopy

There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

Alia jacta est. (The die is cast.)
-- Julius Caesar after crossing the Rubicon

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins

When in darkness or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

The Fourth Law of Computing: On a slow day, you can wait forever.

Sweer's Impossibility Theorem:
Nothing can be both completely general and
internally consistent at the same time.

Law of Communications:
The result of improved and enlarged communications
is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Program complexity grows until it exceeds the
capability of the programmer who must maintain it.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

Boren's Law: When in doubt, mumble.

Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the soul of genius.

You can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plow.

A guy has to get fresh once in a while
so the girl doesn't lose her confidence.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- Thoreau

Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.

Do not clog intellect's sluices with knowledge of questionable uses.

Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.

From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.

God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends.

Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.

I don't remember ever having had the itch, and yet scratching
is one of nature's sweet pleasures, and so handy.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly
unless one has plenty of work to do.

Those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do.

To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is
more difficult to criticize the competent.

What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us
is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.

What passes for woman's intuition is often
nothing more than man's transparency.

Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of
movement unless it was to avoid responsibility?

Good decisions come from experience.
Experience comes from making bad ones.

Perfect practice makes perfect.
-- Vince Lombardi

Electricity: the high priest of false security.

It is not up to you to check the cleaning lady for lumps.

Profanity is the language most programmers know best.

Epitaph:
Here lies an honest lawyer.
That is strange.

Epitaph:
Jonathan Grober
Died dead sober
     =  =
Lord thy wonders
never cease

Happiness descended upon him.  He didn't even have time to step aside.

Je m'en vay chercher un grand Peut-etre
-- Rabelais on his deathbead

Sometimes being able to read makes more questions than if you were stupid.
-- Harlan Ellison

I heed not that my earthly lot
 Hath little of earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot
 In the hatred of a minute:
I mourn not that the desolate
 Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
 Who am a passer-by to.
-- Edgar Allan Poe

To refuse to decide is a decision.
-- Peter Brent

To be positive is to be wrong at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Pink slips are an extremely effective means of communication.
-- Don Smith

It is the instinct of understanding to contradict reason.
-- Jacobi

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?
An inconceivable disturbance.
-- Anon

Your imagination, my dear fellow, is worth more that you imagine.
-- Louis Aragon

All modern thought is permeated by the idea of thinking the unthinkable.
-- Michel Foucault

Eating is touching carried to the bitter end.
-- Samuel Butler

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
-- Montaigne

Cowards die many times before their deaths.
-- Shakespeare

Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.
-- Thomas Fuller

The chicken was the egg's idea for getting more eggs.
-- Samuel Butler

A sadist is a person who is kind to a masochist.
-- Anon

Living means dying.
-- Engles

What happens to your fist when you open your hand?
-- Zen Buddhism

The more you know, the less you think you know.
-- Anon

If the rich could hire other people to die for them,
the poor could make a wonderful living.
-- Yiddish proverb

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Wilde

I'm still an atheist, thank God.
-- Luis Bunuel

If I am because you are you, and if you are you because I am I, then
I am not I, and you are not you.
-- Hasidic rabbi

The trick is to die young as old as possible.

People can be divided into two categories: Those who divide
people into two categories; and those who don't.
-- R. Benchley

There are things which we cannot know,
but it is impossible to know these things.

Padlipsky's corollary to Murphy's law:
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
-- Dorothy Parker

On a clear disk you can seek forever.
-- Ed McClusky

The decision doesn't have to be logical, it was unanimous.
-- Jerry Burchfiel

It's hard to observe your own death objectively and be happy about it.
-- Woody Allen

A technique is a trick that works.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota, ex-MIT professor

Writing a program is nothing but debugging a blank page.
-- Anonymous but frustrated Stanford programmer

Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians.
-- Ed Bluestone

Superstition sees the Finger of God even in trivialities.

Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and
industries.  The question of it's economical application to some purposes
is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved that it will propel
a street car better than a gas jet and give more light than a horse.
-- Ambrose Bierce

Prophets have a way of dying by violence.
-- Bene Gesserit

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield
us from the terrors of the future.
-- from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

Do not count a human dead until you've seen his body.  And even then you
can make a mistake.
-- Bene Gesserit

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe
that makes sense.  But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
-- from "The Sayings of Maud'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

Mood?  What has mood to do with it?  You fight when the necessity
arises - no matter the mood!  Mood's a thing for cattle or making
love or playing the baliset.  It's not for fighting.
-- Gurney Halleck in DUNE

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes
a mob from a people.  He maintains the level of individuals.
Too few individuals, and a people revert to a mob.
-- Stilgar in DUNE

Advice is a dangerous commodity.

Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant.
What small events!  An argument between two women... which way the wind
blows on a certain day... a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or
the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier's eye.  It is
not always the majestic concerns of imperial ministers which dictate the
course of history, nor is it necessarily the pointifications of priests
which move the hands of God.
-- Frank Herbert, CHILDREN OF DUNE

To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely.
-- Frank Herbert, CHILDREN OF DUNE

Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end.
It all depends upon where the observer is standing.
-- Frank Herbert, CHILDREN OF DUNE

To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror;
to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
-- Bene Gesserit saying

Science is supposedly the method by which we stand on the shoulders of
those who came before us.  In computer science, we are all standing on
each others' feet.
-- Paraphrase from G. Popek

A logician trying to explain logic to a programmer is like
a cat trying to explain to a fish what it's like to be wet.
-- Anon

"                     "
-- Marcel Marceau

Consciousness is that which it is not, and is not that which it is.
-- Sartre

There is only one thing certain, namely that we can have nothing certain;
and therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain.
-- Samuel Butler

A banker will lend you money only if you can prove you don't need it.
-- Anon

I mean what I say means I say what I mean.
-- Lewis Carroll

The day is the same length as anything that is the same length as it.
-- Lewis Carroll

If you turn on the light quickly enough,
you can see what the dark looks like.
-- Anon

Some say that people cling to Imperial leadership because space is
infinite.  They feel lonely without a unifying symbol.  For a lonely
people, the Emperor is a definite place.  They can turn toward him
and say: 'See, there He is.  He makes us one.'  Perhaps religion
serves the same purpose.
-- Frank Herbert, DUNE MESSIAH

Ahh, laws...  What's law?  Control?  Law filters chaos and what drips
through?  Serenity?  Law - our highest ideal and our basest nature.
Don't look too closely at the law.  Do, and you'll find rationalized
interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience.
You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.
-- Frank Herbert, DUNE MESSIAH

Possession of second sight has a tendency to make one a dangerous fatalist.
-- Frank Herbert, DUNE MESSIAH

Some men are discovered; others are found out.

He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to
know how to lie well.

As of next Tuesday, LISP will be flushed in favor of COBOL.
Please update your programs appropriately.

Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.  Certain old men prefer
to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with
an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They then point
with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and
ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because
of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find only robust
persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have
tried it.
-- Lazarus Long

Only someone with nothing to be sorry for,
smiles back at the rear of an elephant.

Man invented Alcohol.
 God invented Grass.
  Who do you trust?

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies,
but let wasps and hornets break through.
-- Jonathan Swift

The Hebrew school teacher asked one of his students if he said
prayers before meals.  The proud little boy answered, "Oh, not me.
I don't have to - my mom's a good cook."

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Seen under an ubiquitous "Kilroy was here":
Heisenburg might have been here"!
(if he was, he didn't know it)

Superstition and accident manifest the will of God.
-- C. G. Jung

If the world is a progressively realized community of
interpretation, then either quadruplictity will drink
procrastination or, provided that the nothing negates,
boredom will ensue seldom more often than frequently.
-- Woody Allen

In a steady state universe, rapid transit would not be feasible.
-- Gwyneth Cravens

Should reality sound poetical?
-- Richard Howard

Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis (SFR #16)

Felix ... opportunitate mortis.
[Fortune favored him ... in the opportune moment of his death.]
-- Tacitus

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.
-- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
-- George Orwell

Time:
That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
-- Herbert Spencer

Entropy is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
-- R. Geis (SFR #16)

Never laugh at a live dragon.
-- B. Baggins

What would you do if you found a dwarf on your doormat?
-- B. Baggins

The army of weird and beautiful works could well do with recruits.
-- C. S. Lewis

Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.
-- Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "Ode"

If I chased the straight line of my thoughts, what a maze I'd write!
-- Brian W. Aldiss, Earthworks

Only the fantastic has a chance of being real in the cosmos.
-- Hawkwind

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

We will be geared toward the average rather than the exceptional.
-- Jethro Tull

God is an overwhelming responsibility.
-- Jethro Tull

'God' said the sea goat, 'is always on both sides.'
-- Pete Sinfield

Paranoia is having to keep your TV set on all the time because
the people in the box will talk about you if you don't force
them to stick to their scripts.
-- Adapted by R. Geis from G. Farber

...the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil
out of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge.
-- Letter in NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES #19

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

I am a peer group of one.
-- R. Geis

Ten years of rejection slips is nature's
way of telling you to stop writing.
-- R. Geis

Confusion will be my epitaph,
As I walk a cracked and broken path,
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh,
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
-- King Crimson

Don't eat the yellow snow.
-- Frank Zappa

And oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
-- Lennon and McCartney

You don't leave your fly open in a pressure suit.
-- Larry Niven

I wouldn't worry about them old dreams none, they're only in your head.
-- Bob Dylan

Reality is a crutch.
-- Dick Jensen's toilet wall

When a man is treated like a beast, he says: after all, I'm human.
When he behaves like a beast, he says: after all I'm only human.
-- Karl Kraus

Do not adjust your mind.  The fault is in reality.
-- Bill Wright

You are free to do whatever you like.
You need only face the consequences.

All important decisions must be made on
the basis of insufficient data.

Love is not enough, but is sure helps.

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
-- Edward John Pheles

Nothing can come out of nothing, nothing can go back to nothing.
-- Persius

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is
difficult to class them separately.  One step above the sublime, makes
the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous, makes it sublime again.
-- Thomas Paine

All solutions breed new problems.

There's no point in burying the hatchet if
you're going to put a marker on the site.
-- Anon.

If you don't want to grow old -- die young.
- Anon.

To think is to make one's self very uncomfortable.

No poems can please long, nor live, which are written by water drinkers.
-- Horace

Civilization is an exercise in masochism by most, in sadism by few.
-- R. Geis

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but Greed is its father.
(We're all ashamed of Greed, so he isn't mentioned much.)
-- R. Geis

The lost secret of eternal life is in the
-- R. Geis

The world gets better every day...
Then worse again in the evening.
-- C. Runyon, Chief Potentate, Epigram Distillers

I believe the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac
thought, it will be possible... to systematize confusion and contribute
to the total discrediting of the world of reality.
-- Salvidor Dali

Never try to make anyone like yourself - you know and God knows,
that one of you is enough.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's a plot to make it look like I'm a paranoid!!!
-- Amos Salmonson

ME, paranoid?  Why do you ask?!
-- Victor Kostrikin

I don't believe in astrology.  We Geminis are very skeptical.
-- Tom Marcinko

Anarchists of the world, unite!
You have nothing to lose but your... er... anarchism.
-- R. Geis

The possibility does exist, of course, that I am paranoid...
But that's what they want me to think, isn't it?
-- Ed Pearson

A wise man knows everything
A shrewd one, everybody.
-- Chinese Fortune Cookie

Definition of a specialist - One who never makes small
mistakes while moving towards the grand fallacy.
-- Marshal McLuhan

I wouldn't mind the number of paranoids around today,
if they weren't all out to get me.
-- Malcolm Edwards

Another person's secret is like another person's money:
You are not as careful with it as you are with your own.
-- E. W. Howe

On the Train of Thought, 99% of the tickets sold are half fare.
-- Ed Cagle, KWALHIOQUA #8

To a misogynist, a Ms. is as good as a mile.
-- R. Geis

If everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks

I'm not paranoid, it's just that everyone else thinks I am.
-- G. Farber

A true cynic doubts everything -- including his own cynicism.
-- R. Geis

If you can keep your head while all about you, others are losing theirs...
perhaps you're the executioner.
-- R. Geis

History has the relation to truth that theology
has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of.
-- Lazarus Long

Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the
earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.
-- Lazarus Long

Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something
sacred, or at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very
convenient to governments.
-- Lazarus Long

"Rights" is a fictional abstraction.  No one has "Rights", neither
machines nor flesh-and-blood.  Persons... have opportunities, not
rights, which they use or do not use.
-- Lazarus Long

Certainly the game is rigged.  Don't let that stop you;
if you don't bet, you can't win.
-- Lazarus Long

Always listen to experts.  They'll tell you what can't be done, and why.
Then do it.
-- Lazarus Long

Delusions are often functional.  A mother's opinions about her
children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam,
keep her from drowning them at birth.
-- Lazarus Long

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
-- Lazarus Long

It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
-- Lazarus Long

A motion to adjourn is always in order.
-- Lazarus Long

It is better to copulate than never.
-- Lazarus Long

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac.  But flowers work almost as well.
-- Lazarus Long

There is only one way to console a widow.  But remember the risk.
-- Lazarus Long

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
-- Lazarus Long

It took more than one man to change her name to Shanghai Lilly.
-- Michael Moorcock

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
-- Lennon and McCartney

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime,
you just might find, you get what you need.
-- Mick Jagger

You can be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.
-- Bob Dylan

All wrong numbers are the same person.
-- Larry Niven

Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from
where you started.
-- Anon

Your theory is crazy -- but not crazy enough to be true.
-- Neils Bohr

The only excuse for bad manners is fast reflexes.
-- Klingon Proverb

Speed, versatility, user friendly -- Pick any two.

I respect Faith but doubt is what gets you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner

186,000 miles/sec... It's not only a good idea... It's the Law!
-- T Shirt

90% of everything is crap.
-- Tom Jennings

Get off a shot Fast.  This upsets him long enough to make your second
shot perfect.
-- Lazarus Long

Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman's breasts;
it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.
--Lazarus Long

Everything in Excess.  To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites.
Moderation is for Monks.
-- Lazarus Long

Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
-- Lazarus Long

Courage is the compliment of fear.  A man who is fearless cannot be
courageous.  (He is also a fool)
-- Lazarus Long

There is no such thing as social gambling.  Either you're there to
cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it, or you're a sucker.
-- Lazarus Long

One mans magic is another man's engineering.
-- Lazarus Long

"God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends".
This might not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than
any other theology.
-- Lazarus Long

Have you noticed how much they look like orchids?  Lovely!
-- Lazarus Long

Natural Laws have no pity.
-- Lazarus Long

Jennings' Innate Perversity of Nature Rule:
The tendancy of Nature to cause exactly the thing you are not prepared
for, to happen.  This is because that Nature gets to use the set of all
things NOT known to humans, which by definition is infinite.

Paradise is just like where you are right now, only much better.
-- Laurie Anderson, Language is a virus

Egotism is the drug that soothes the pain of stupidity.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

Information and computer programs want to be free!
Yes, but labor wants to be paid.
-- Chris Espinoza, Apple

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.

He who loses, wins the race, And parallel lines meet in space.
-- John Boyd, Last Starship from Earth

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.  "Now here you see, it takes all
you can do, to keep in the same place.  If you want to get somewhere else,
you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.  "Where shall I begin, please your
Majesty ?" he asked.  "Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely,
"and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

God does not play dice with the Universe.
-- Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for
somewhere else.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
-- Robert Heinlein

... if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is
a Fact, proof is necessary.
-- Samuel Clemens

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all, makes everything in
New England, but the weather.  I don't know who makes that, but I think
it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment
and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted
to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take
their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into
use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather
which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-- Mark Twain

The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.
-- Herb Caen

Designed with your mind in mind, by people who have in mind, what you
should have in mind.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.

We are getting into semantics again.  If we use words,
there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.
-- H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.

America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for
one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.

How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a program?
Ten.  Nine to hold it down, and one to cut its head off.

Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an
international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
-- George Bernard Shaw

PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

WEILER'S LAW:
Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

FINAGLE'S LAW:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.

RUDIN'S LAW:
In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses
of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

WOODWARD'S LAW: A theory is better than an explanation.

UNNAMED LAW: If it happens, it must be possible.

CUTLER WEBSTER'S LAW:
There are two sides to every argument unless a man is personally involved,
in which case there is only one.

THE ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE:
By definition, when you are investigating the unknown -
you do not know what you will find.

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 and then quietly
strangled.

One Galileo in two thousand years is enough.
-- Pope Pius XII

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.

Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom.

