Advice: Dance like nobody is watching.
        Love like you've never been hurt.
   -Anonymous

It is better to go into a corner slow and come out fast 
than to go into a corner fast and come out dead. 
  -Stirling Moss

If my daughter was raped and decapitated, I would be for the 
death penalty, but that doesn't make the death penalty right.
  -Mario Cuomo

Remember: you are not selling your soul or committing yourself to
a life of poverty. You already did that when you became a ham.
 -KA1WTS (trying to get hams to participate in a drill)

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, a wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat."

To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future 
be totally unlike your past.  Your history is not your destiny.  
  -Alan Cohen, author  

Network managers are reminded this week that Microsoft 
does not have a monopoly on security vulnerabilities 
(just a dominant market share). 
  -Network World Fusion

There by the grace of God stands a lump of stone so painstakingly 
and artfully rendered, its IQ is all but indistinguishable from 
its inspiration.
  -A parody site on the new Dan Quayle bust

Perhaps as an exercise in zero-tolerance they [schools] should dispense 
with  the alphabet entirely. Someone in possession of one can find all 
sorts of unprotected speech in it. 
  -An anonymous person commenting upon this situation.

I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its 
electoral votes to the President next year.
  -Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Inc.
   Diebold is providing Ohio's voting machines.

Liberia

I scored a 47% on the "How Wes Are You?" Quizie. What about you?

Fun fact:
The Tang Dynasty empress Wu Hou (who ruled 683-705 AD) insisted that
all visiting dignitaries perform oral sex on her to pay homage.
  -The Utne Reader September/October, 2003 Issue 119 p. 76
   (Here's some Tang Poetry)

I tell you: It's taken me such a long time to discover that
I can know a lot of stuff for sure, without being right. 
  -Anne Lamott

According to ciac.org there are 31 [serious built-in security] 
vulnerabilities specific to Windows XP; 54 in Windows 2000 server; 
45 in Windows 98/95; 14 for WinME; 71 for NT since 1994; 100 for the
entire server systems since 2000; 37 problems specific to IE since
1997; 15 for Outlook; and 42 general problems (MySQL, Word, etc.). 

Just for another comparison, Linux has 54 serious exploitable 
vulnerabilities going back to 1994, while ancient Unix has 86 
known vulnerabilities going back to 1989 when the CIAC first 
begins tracking such things. 
   -Paul Ingram

In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car 
parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in 
the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please 
don't steal this." 
  -Rob Pegoraro

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
  -Plato

Quotes from the book "101 Reasons to be an Episcopalian" delivered
during a sermon on July 27, 2003, the eve of the Episcopal general 
convention of 2003, by The Rev. Dr. James G. Bradley

  The Episcopal Church taught me that Jesus came to challenge, not
  just comfort; to overturn, not maintain; to love, not judge; to 
  include, not cast aside.
    -Elizabeth Geitz, a Canon at the Cathedral of the Diocese of New Jersey

  We believe that love without justice is sentimentality.
    -Carter Heyward of Massachusetts, one of the first 7 women 
     ordained as a priest in the Episcopal denomination

  I love our church because we don't think unity means uniformity.
    -a lay person from New York

Today is my eleventy-first birthday!  I haven't done half of you half as
often as I should like, and I've done less than half of you half as well
as you deserve.  But don't worry; I don't have anything contagious.  So,
with that, goodbye!
  -Yeah, it's Bilbo all right, just not the Tolkien version!

There are philosophies which are unendurable not 
because men are cowards, but because they are men.
  -Ludwig Lewisohn, German-born novelist-critic

There are many levels of reality.  Each one more dangerous 
than the last, and each one more terrifying...
  -Sleepy Shirley

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as 
erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
  -Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

As scarce as truth is, the supply is always greater than the demand.
  -Josh Billings, nom de plume of Henry Wheeler Shaw
                  American author (1818-1885)

See the happy moron, he doesn't give a damn.  
I wish I were  a moron... my God: perhaps I am!
  -Anonymous

The painting's created, and I'm just erasing 
A crystal-clear canvas is my masterpiece...
  -Barenaked Ladies, "Fly"

Cells in the human brains consume energy while processing (creating
software), by converting the chemical energy from food into electrical
and heat energy.  Even while you are reading this paragraph, the cells
in your brain are burning out the fuel and are using tiny amounts of
energy. So STOP READING NOW !
   -moselle

The Ten Commandments should be posted in all courtrooms. And the U.S.
Constitution should be glued onto Jesus' chest in every church in America.
  -Ibid

Death is not good. I reject death.
I will stay away from trucks today.
  -Ibid

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
  -Yup, Ibid

It was a battle of an American against a German on French soil, where 
the Russians came in third and the French were nowhere to be seen.
  -A friend, describing the 2003 Tour de France

I think the burden is on those people who think [Saddam Hussain] didn't 
have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.
  -Ari Fleischer, official spokesman for George W. Bush 
     (from the New York Times)

I'm not against spontaneity!  It's just that
there's an appropriate time and a place for it!
  -Renate  7/20/2003

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.
  -Martyn Percy From The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. 
    Try the quest

In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. 
Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
  -Kitkatter

Never ask a man where he's from.  If he's from Texas, he'll 
tell you soon enough.  If not, there's no need to embarrass him.
   -KD5UJX, via N1RWE

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom 
for the one who thinks differently.
  -Rosa Luxemburg

I would sleep with it, but it's pointy!
I want to have its children!
  -I'll leave the "who" and "what" to your imagination.

Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only 
the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
  -Theodore N. Vail

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
  -Katharine Hepburn

If you want to play in our revolution, 
you have to live by our rules.
  -Tom DeLay, currently the House majority leader
It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they 
want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments.
  -also Mr. DeLay

A straight line is the shortest in morals as in mathematics. 
  -Maria Edgeworth

Bonehead award three, a "stupidest excuse in the world" bonehead
award, goes to the New York City Board of Elections which has said
they will not repair the city's 7,000 voting machines that were
responsible for some estimated 60,000 lost votes in the 2000
presidential election, most of which would have gone to Democratic
candidates, because, according to the Republican commissioner, most of
those people whose votes were not counted never intended to have their
votes count anyway but only came down to the polling places to make it
look like they were doing their civic duty.  And, says Republican
commissioner Stephen Weiner, fixing the machines would therefore be
tantamount to forcing people to vote against their will.
  -Newsday (Long Island, New York) 16-Apr-03
    -via the Bonehead Of The Day mailing list

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
  -Gustave Flaubert, French author

Hell is in your head.
   -Renate 6/15/2003

Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bullshit before.
  -Stephen, via Alma

Re: The name of the character that is behind bars in the 
    Monopoly board game is Jake the Jailbird.
Okay, I know it might just be my family, which is, in and of 
itself, extraordinarily WEIRD, but we have always called the guy 
on Monopoly in the jail Uncle Albert, and if you were visiting 
jail, you were visiting "poor ole Uncle Albert" who got there 
because of his drinking problem. If you were actually IN jail, 
you WERE Uncle Albert, and subsequently, laughed at. It 
traumatized me... I still bear deep emotional scars from 
being Uncle Albert... ;_;
-Katie
  -Amusing Facts

[A recent survey says that] orchestral musicians rated 
slightly below prison guards in job satisfaction.  ...
Orchestra musicians are an angry mob.
  -heard on NPR 6/6/2003

Buzz has bought this line of reasoning and as a result has cast 
a suspicious eye on the never-ending parade of vendors marching 
through here with filtering schemes.  All claim to minimize false 
positives and some -- the few, the proud, the full of it -- claim 
to eliminate the risk altogether.
  -Paul McNamara in Computerworld

Every day I leash 'er up and let 'er run for about 25 minutes.
  -My son, talking about his electric guitar 05/31/2003

To write or to speak is almost inevitably to lie a little.
It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form;
to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of
compression, how Truth is mangled and torn!
  -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

He [White House press secretary Ari Fleischer] has started 
blurting out the truth, so maybe it is time for him to go.
  -Heard on public radio station WSHU 05/24/2003

There are a lot of things we wouldn't do if we'd just smell first.
  -Michael Feldman 05/24/2003

I never met a petition that had an effect on public policy, because 
the general sense when I was in the legislature was that people would 
sign any petition without reading it.  My favorite example was the time 
in the 80s when I was chairing the health committee and my staff organized 
a petition to convince then Governor O'Neill to put money into Lyme Disease 
(at the time a newly discovered condition).  Over 10,000 people signed the 
petition, and it wasn't until after we had submitted the copies that we 
found the mistake: instead of stating that Lyme Disease was caused by "the
bite of a deer tick," the petition declared that Lyme Disease was caused by 
"the bite of a deer." We decided to leave well enough alone, figuring the 
Governor's staff wouldn't notice it either (they didn't).
  -Paul Gionfriddo

It isn't about the ideas being expressed, it's about 
respect for others in the exchange of ideas.
  -Brian J. Glenn, re: The Wesleyan Chalkings Controversy

After much thought, prayer, and consultation, 
I have decided that I was being a horse's ass.
  -Um, me, on 5/7/2003  
   Dontcha' just hate it when you have to say stuff like this?

'RE: Jews for Jesus: I joined "Vegetartians for Hot Dogs" instead.'
  -YANG
[Actually, there's a better organization: Atheists For Jesus  No kidding!]

Will driving while stoned- "Oh God, is that a cop? 
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh wait, it's just a mailbox."
  -I'll let this person be anonymous, thanks

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
  -Carlos Fuentes, Mexican author

Wise men talk because they have something to say, 
fools talk because they have to say something.
  -Plato

Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. 
Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody."
  -Moms Mabley

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
   -Kitkatter

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
   -Noam Chomsky

Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.
   -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You do not lead by hitting people over the head. 
That's assault, not leadership.
  -Dwight D. Eisenhower

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone 
was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some 
other causes for prejudice by noon.
  -George Aiken, U.S. senator (1892-1984)

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
  -Oliver Wendell Holmes

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities;
an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
  -Harry Truman

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege 
of doing so, too.
   -Voltaire, author and philosopher

They got rid of the Blue Screen of Death.
They replaced it with the desktop.
  -My son, commenting about Windows XP

Yes, but think of the plusses.  More kids could get away with 
making out by claiming "Oh, I was just giving her a Freedom Kiss! 
You wouldn't want to hinder her freedom, would you?" 

Ok, it's farfetched.. but I'd use it as an excuse if I were younger.
  -NuclearWinter

"We can chew gum and walk at the samme time."
  -A Bush II spokesperson, apparently feeling 
   that this point needed to be clarified

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. 
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  -William Pitt The Younger (1759-1806) British statesman

My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now.  I like them, 
but not when they come flying through the air.
  -Kristian Hagen, whose skull was fractured by a  
   severed sheep's head at a Norway death metal concert.

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. 
No Americans have been more impoverished than these 
who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
  -H.U. Westermayer
Yup, obvious statistical fallacy, but still, a good point (imo).

BUSINESS: Fed reports economy still sluggish; duct tape sales among few high points
   -A real headline from The Nando Times

Diplomacy at work:
"Shut up, you monkey! Curse be upon your mustache, you traitor!"
  -Iraqi Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, firing off 
   a "traditional insult to a man's honor" to a Kuwaiti 
   diplomat during an emergency summit of Islamic nations
After this, Kuwaiti Information Minister Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed 
jumped up and waved a small Kuwaiti flag.  The Iraqi delegates left 
the room briefly until they were persuaded to return.  The meeting
broke up, with the delegates unable to agree upon a resolution.

NOTE: Should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, 
a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood 
and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself 
into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and 
search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. 
Just thought you'd want to know that.
  -Registration notice in the evaluation copy of Graphics Workshop

"Police: Body Cavity Search Reveals Crack" 
   -quoted from a La Crosse (Wisc.) Tribune headline

As of this writing, 15 men in the history of organized 
baseball have ever thrown a perfect game. Only one of 
those men did it half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, 
monster breath and a raging, skull-rattling hangover. 
That would be me. 
  -New York Yankees pitcher David Wells

The Bush administration has a plan (those are rapidly becoming 
the six most chilling words in the English language)...
  -Molly Ivins

Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
   -Joshua Billings

Re: "On average, an American home has 3-10 gallons of hazardous materials."
Come now, Gauher, no family drinks THAT much Mountain Dew. 
   -Curtis, USA

I think it's time for lamb's blood on the office door.
  -A colleague, on upcoming pending headcount reductions
     (see also Exodus 12:21-23)

You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.
  -Bonnie Prudden

I heard on a news report of a pro-war demonstration the other 
day someone shouting something like "get Muslims!" Get Muslims? 
For what, introducing algebra to Europe?
   -Steve

Tthe world's longest work of non-fiction is "The Yongle Dadian", the
10,000-volume encyclopedia produced by 5,000 scholars over a period of 5
years during the Ming Dynasty in China.
   -Tricky Trivia

Quite a number of people also describe the German classical
author Shakespeare, as belonging to English literature,
because -- quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon -- he
was forced by authorities of that country to write in English.
   -from the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, 1940

Regarding Teflon being the most slippery substance in the world, 
you've obviously never walked through a cow pasture in the rain.
   -Sheila

LemonEye: I need to find an icon that personifies me, 
          for a link to my webpage...but what?
Willi:    A flower with teeth? 

Any day you do not put your tongue on a [frozen] pump handle
is a good day. ... Happiness lies in the small things.
   -Garrison Keillor (on WNPR 2/15/2003)

Everyone knows no war goes as planned. 
Otherwise, both sides would always win.
   -Bonnie Erbe 

I don't get no more chances. Next time I die I'm out. 
My nine lives are over.
  -Boxer Johnny Tapia, who has been declared 
   clinically dead four times

Spiel Cheque is grate, but it's knot a cur awl.  Yew still knead 
too no how too yews the write word. 
   -a mailing list contributor, commenting 
     on the improper use of a homonym

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

A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to 
your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything 
out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be 
examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and
it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump 
on the pathway of life. 
   -Celia Luce, author 

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
   -Samuel Johnson

"[A fan will] scream from the 60th row of bleachers that you 
missed a marginal call in the center of the interior line," 
the ex-ref said of a heckler. "And then he won't be able to 
find his car in the parking lot." 
   -Erstwhile NFL referee Jim Tunney

Wind chill is if you're standing out there naked, and I don't 
see anyone out there naked.  It's something weathermen use to 
scare the general public with.
  -Cannon Mountain (a northern New Hampshire ski resort)
    Assistant ski patrol director Gareth Slattery

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any 
invention in human history - with the possible exceptions 
of handguns and tequila.
   -Mitch Ratliffe

A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked
in. "Hey, we're rich!" shouted the conservative. "The average person in
this bar is now worth more than a billion!" "That's silly," replied the
liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me
any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing
the discredited politics of class warfare."
   -Paul Krugman

Nicotine is one of the most powerful poisons known. Though we 
normally think in terms of arsenic and strychnine when the term 
"poison" comes up, the truth is that nicotine is far more deadly. 
The lethal dose of arsenic for a 150 pound adult is 200 mg., for 
strychnine 75 mg., but for nicotine only 60 mg. It can and does 
kill even in relatively small amounts. Those who wear nicotine 
patches must exercise great care about the disposal of their used 
patches lest children or pets come in contact with the seemingly 
"spent" aids and become deeply sickened or even possibly die.
   -Urban Legends Reference Pages

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the 
anticipation of change:  the change itself is nothing; when 
we have made it, the next wish is to change again.  
   -Samuel Johnson

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that 
if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
  -Colin Powell
 
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
   -Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

Economic studies estimate that Project Apollo returned five to seven
dollars to the United States' economy for every dollar invested in it.
   -www.trickytrivia.com

The coffee was so bad I thought it was 
going to jump out of the cup and rob a bank.
   -My son (about someone else's coffee, not mine)

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are
too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get
by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.
   -J.C. Watts

Lately I'm stupified. Something rancid in the air...chimpanzee turds.
   -Idleeric

In producers, loafing is productive; and no creator, of whatever
magnitude, has ever been able to skip that stage, any more than a 
mother can skip gestation.
   -Jacques Barzun

'"(Bush) is not elected as chief theologian," (Pat) Robertson 
told The Washington Times.  True. In this administration, 
that's John Ashcroft's job.'
   -David Waters

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, 
since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
   -Benito Mussolini

Aside from cynicism (which has been an almost infallible guide to
administration environmental policy so far), how do I reach that
conclusion?
   -Paul Krugman in the New York Times

Why should we ask our military to die for cheap oil when 
the rest of us aren't even being asked to get better mileage?
   -Molly Ivins

While the Internet was originally designed and configured 
to be survivable, its transformation to a commercial entity 
has caused it to become economically efficient at the expense 
of no longer being anywhere near as survivable.
   -Vince Cannistraro, the former chief of 
    counterterrorism at the CIA 
    in this Computerworld article

Habaneros for breakfast make you see Jesus!
   -Mr. Roofer

Some of my thoughts are so terrible that they make
Jesus want to drink straight gin out of the cat's dish.
  -Anne Lamott

My masculinity needs tactile affirmation.
   -coop

Owen!  The neighbors are not your guinea pigs!
   -His mom

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
   -Charles F. Kettering

Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that 
accompanies important ongoing activity.
   -Paul Goodman

If you are still talking about what you did 
yesterday, you haven't done much today.
   -Anonymous

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."
   -Stephen King, and Bob Dylan, and....

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are
good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you
are a vegetarian. 
   -Dennis Wholey

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing 
can be changed until it is faced.
   -James Baldwin

There are two kinds of critics in life: those who criticize 
you because they want you to fail and those who criticize 
you because they want you to succeed. And people can smell 
the difference a mile away. If you convey to people that
you really want them to succeed, they will take any criticism 
you dish out. If you convey that you really hold them in
contempt, you can tell them that the sun is shining and they 
won't listen to you. 
   -Thomas L. Friedman, in a
    New York Times Editorial:
    "Tone It Down a Notch"
    Wednesday, October 2, 2002

There are three sides to every story.
Your side, my side, and the truth.
And no one's lying.
   -Robert Evans

The state can't give you free speech, 
and the state can't take it away. 
You're born with it, 
like your eyes, 
like your ears. 
Freedom is something you assume, 
then you wait for someone 
to try to take it away. 
The degree to which you resist 
is the degree to which you are free.
   -Utah Phillips

The condition upon which God hath given 
liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
   -John Philpot Curran, 1790

I pledge on the altar of God undying hostility to any 
government restriction on the free minds of the people.
   -Thomas Jefferson

I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast importance.
Of course, I could be prejudiced.  I am a visual art.
   -Kermit the Frog

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
   -Anonymous

They crowded up to Lenin with their noses worn off,
A handshake is worthy if it's all that you've got.
   -R.E.M., "Harborcoat"

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will 
spend the first four sharpening the axe.
   -Abraham Lincoln

No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up.
   -Lily Tomlin

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your
path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, 'Why were 
things of this sort ever brought into the world?'
   -Marcus Aurelius

What do you get when you play New Age music
backwards? 
     New Age music. 
What does it say on a blues singer's tombstone? 
     "I didn't wake up this morning..."
   -Jeff Bigler  His MIT Hacks


When the oak is felled the forest echoes with its fall, but 
a hundred acorns are sown silently by an unnoticed breeze.
   -Thomas Carlyle

I am an old man and have known many troubles, but most 
of them never happened.
   -Mark Twain

Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly incapable of
discussing anything in a fair and catholic spirit. They appeal, not
to reason, but to prejudice; not to facts, but to passages of
Scripture. They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual
exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Whoever differs with
them upon what they are pleased to call "fundamental truths," is,
in their opinion, a base and infamous man. To re-enact the
tragedies of the sixteenth century, they lack only the power.
   -Robert Ingersoll

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the
income tax.
   -Albert Einstein

"I saw the goat the next day--it did not seem too upset,
but it's hard to tell."
   -A police officer in Humberside, England, who was
    inundated with phone calls when a trainload of
    commuters witnessed a man having sex with the
    grazing farm animal  per Newsweek 2/11/2002 p. 17

Money is the mother's milk of politics.
   -Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the California
                Assembly from 1961 to 1968

What we know about Osama bin Laden is this: he's worth 
$300 million, he has five wives and 26 kids ... and he 
hates Americans for their 'excessive' lifestyle."
   -David Letterman

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because 
the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain you might look 
good, but all you could do is run for office.
   -Covert Bailey

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
   -Edward R. Murrow

A person who is nice to you but rude 
to the waiter is not a nice person.
   -anonymous

That's called a "record".  Back in the old days...
   Shirley 1/12/2001

Never bend your head.  Hold it high.  Look the world
straight in the eye.
   -Helen Keller
Ummm....

After blowing my vacation waiting for repairmen who
never showed up, I gradually arrived at my Theory of
Repairman Evolution: Repairmen evolved from cats.
That's why they don't come when you call.
   -P.S. Wall

"I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty.
Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing
quite well for themselves."
   -Jerry Garcia

While I agree it is weird for there to be a general feeling of relief for an
accident over terrorism, as someone who lives in the Boston area, I feel a lot
safer flying than driving around here - no matter how carefully.    The drivers
around here are far more life threatening.   I had no fear of flying going to
Germany last week, but I dread Boston drivers.
   -G.B. (from weschat)

Right now, I think every doctor in America has anthrax on the brain.
   -A nurse, being interviewed on NPR, trying to reassure people
    that doctors were planning for any outbreaks.  (11/16/2001)

It's actually not that bad.  You can 
tell what most of it is supposed to be.
   -My daughter, commenting upon the food at college
    (To understand why this is true, and not sarcasm, you'd
    have to have experienced typical U.S. public school food
    from an early age.  I don't recommend it to the uninitiated.)

Drugs don't work.  Children work.
   -Sign on a Middletown Area Transit bus.
    My daughter and I are still trying to
    figure out what this means.  Suggestions welcomed.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert
to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding. 
   -Louis Brandeis

On newspapers:
   "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the
    man who reads nothing but newspapers."
       -Thomas Jefferson
   "Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the
    chaff, and then print the chaff."
       -Adlai Stevenson
   "Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to
    others what it personally does not understand."
       -Lord Northcliffe 

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, 
will ever come out as you first hoped.
   -Lillian Hellman

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
   -Mick Jagger

SBC's claim that cable Internet access slows during high-traffic
usage is akin to complaining that a Porsche in traffic goes slower.
   -Kent Sipes

Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into 
them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. 
   -Solon, statesman (c. 638-c558 BCE)

"Mr Vimes is going to go completely bursar.  
 He's going to go totally Librarian-poo." 
       -Fred Colon

Ask an engineer for the time and he'll tell you how to build a clock.
   -My teenaged son, as I tried to explain something to him

Last Words

Drink to me.
   -Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Last words
Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.
   -Ludwig von Beethoven, Last words
Go away... I'm all right.
   -H. G. Wells (1866-1946), Last words
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
   -Karl Marx, Last words to his housekeeper
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--
   -General John Sedgwick, Union commander in the Civi War, speaking his last words as he
     was watching enemy troops during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
   -Oscar Wilde


Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired 
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are 
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms 
is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, 
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not 
a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it 
is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
   -Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

It's a lot easier to be a parent when you don't have kids.
   -My son again, 7/20/2001

"Reps. Dick Armey, Tom DeLay and J.C. Watts wrote Bush a letter calling 
stem-cell research 'an industry of death.' Funny, I've never heard any 
of them describe arms manufacturers that way."
   -Molly Ivins

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average
people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where
medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music
and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost,
travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to
mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you
don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were
talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.
   -Terry Pratchett

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon 
as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and 
with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.  
   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Remember: friends would help you hide.  TRUE friends would help you hide the body.
   -A siggie from....

I think I will stick with my garden after all--even the growth 
of weeds makes me tense these days.
   -Dave Sloane

Life is short, but sweet for certain.
   -Dave Matthews

The information you have is not what you want; 
the information you want is not what you need; 
the information you need is not what you can get; 
the information you can get costs more than you want to pay. 
   -Brian E Hodges

Are you (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2?

My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest 
explanation is usually dead wrong.  But I've noticed that the simplest 
explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any
complicated explanation could hope to be. 
  -Scott Adams, God's Debris

There's a witch hunt going on, and he's wearing a pointed hat!
   -Sherrill, commenting on our son's penchant for wearing
    all-black clothing, including a trenchcoat, to school.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.  
Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 
"Good morning" at total strangers.  
   -Maya Angelou

The only exercise I got all day was lifting my legs
during the sexual harassment training at work!
   -Yeah, I'm really going to name this person.  As if.  :-)

In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second listening, the
third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth -- teaching others.
   -Ibn Gabirol, poet and philosopher (c. 1022-1058)

One of my basic rules for personal relationships is as follows: 
When A says, "If you invite B, I will not attend", say to A: 
"I'm so sorry. We will miss you."
   -Ann Landers (who adds that it might be prudent to make sure they are
           seated as far from each other as possible if they do attend.)

You know, things used to suck in the old days, too.
They just sucked without indoor plumbing.
   -my son 4-3-2001

I no longer need to punish, deceive or compromise myself.
Unless, of course, I want to stay employed.
   -Rose Thompson

I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be
that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge
myself through someone else's eyes.
   -Sally Field

Henry's Pager Law: Critical partitions never fill up during working hours.
   -Henry Farkas

You don't have a problem if you have a problem.  You only have a problem
if you have a problem and you don't know how to fix it.  If you know how
to fix it, it's not really a problem; it's just a delay.
   -Hans VanBuitenen

True fact:  The first coin officially contracted for minting by the US Government
was designed by Benjamin Franklin, and bore the words "MIND YOUR BUSINESS" on the front.
(However, the contractor cheated the government, and fled the country to avoid prosecution.)
   -http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Fugio.intro.html

Einstein's Relativity put an end to the comfortable notion that science 
was common sense organized.  The net result was that modern physics deprived 
human beings of any object of cosmic contemplation.  One could still gaze at 
the Milky Way, but whatever notion crossed the mind at the sight was obsolete, 
any emotion a primitive fantasy; the impression grows that science is the task 
of peeling an infinite onion.  In that process, science as it moves leaves 
behind it a shadow: superstition.  ...  As things stand, despite the 
conscientious work of many trained minds, the reports of "science" on a wide 
range of subjects are contradictory, equally publicized, and the laity cannot 
decide what to believe; an intelligent opinion cannot be formed.  And when there 
is evidence that business and politics affect more than one "scientific" 
pronouncement, gone is the confidence in science found in the 19C.
   -Jacques Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence pps. 750-751, excerpted

During the 1998 refit of the U.S.S. Constitution, a number of interesting artifacts 
were found; one was a provisioning record. When the ship left Boston on July 22, 1798 
with a crew of 475 officers and men, she carried 45,600 gallons of fresh water (enough 
for six months), 7,400 cannon balls, 22,600 pounds of black powder and 79,406 gallons 
of rum. Her mission was to harass English shipping. Making Jamaica on October 6, she 
took on 828 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum. Then she headed to the Azores,
where she arrived on November 12. She took on 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of 
Portuguese wine. She then set sail for England on November 18. In the ensuing days she  
defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled twelve merchantmen, but not 
before salvaging the rum.  On January 27, 1799, powder and shot exhausted, Old Ironsides, 
undaunted, slipped up the Firth of Clyde, put ashore that night a landing party, and 
captured a whiskey distillery, hauling away 40,000 gallons of what we now call Scotch. 
Then she raised sail and headed for home. She arrived in Boston on February 20,1799 with 
no cannon balls, no powder, no food, no rum, no wine, no whiskey and 45,600 gallons of 
stagnant water.  Length of cruise: 181 days.  Alcohol consumption: 252,000+ gallons, or
2.93 gallons per man per day (this does not include the unknown quantify of rum captured 
from the 12 English merchant vessels in November).  Naval historians say that the 
re-enlistment rate from this cruise was over 92%.  
   -various sources, including the National Park Service

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. 
  -Benjamin Franklin

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge. 
   -Edward Chilton

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by
gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
   -James Madison

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, 
it expects what never was and never will be. 
   -Thomas Jefferson

History probably records only one instance in which cavalry
won a naval battle.  The French army that invaded Holland in
the winter of 1794 captured a Dutch fleet when its mounted
soldiers swept across the ice and seized control of the
ships, frozen in place just offshore.
   -Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts

In Germany they first came for the Communists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 
Then they came for the Jews, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 
Then they came for the trade unionists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 
Then they came for the Catholics, 
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 
Then they came for me - 
and by that time no one was left to speak up. 
   -Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the paranoids,
but it's not really paranoia if they actually are out to get you.
Then they came for the schizophrenics.
Part of me wanted to speak up and part of me didn't.
Then they came for the depressives,
but I was too tired to care.
Then they came for me.
They came from another planet and they were in little ships.
They imbedded a microchip in my brain that controls what I say
so now there's nobody left to speak up.
    -me
                                                                               
I suppose anything is possible; it is just that 
some things are more possible than others.
   -Kenneth L. Smith

The American people have now spoken, but it's going to 
take a little while to figure out exactly what they said.
   -Bill Clinton, November 7, 2000

A Pole remarking about the present state of the US election:
If this election were in Poland, and if the guy who declared himself
the winner were the son of a former Premier who also had been the head of
the secret service, and if he had barely won because of voting fraud in a
Province controlled by his brother, then the US would have sent troops in
last week.

Pitr:       Ahhh, finally to be goink to temple of yumski!
            Tonight, comrades, we are eatink sushi.
Dust Puppy: What's sushi?
Pitr:       It is religious.  Like cathedral.
            Caffeine for mind.  Pizza for body.  Sushi... for soul.
   -User Friendly

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  ...  One hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean 
of material prosperity."
   -Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream", Washington DC, Aug 28, 1963

I love you long time, make you holler, but I got no DASD for you!
   -Bob Beebe

If you pay your employees well, if they love what they are doing, then 
they’ll work so much harder that you will make more money, not less.
   -Charles Butcher, who shared $18 million with his employees, a substantial 
               percentage  of the profit he received when he sold the company

I find it interesting that Eros spelled backwards is sore.
   -John Ganio 

Gosh, isn't having internet access at work a great idea? Who'd ever have thought 
bosses all over the country would fall for that one? Offices where radios are 
forbidden and employees would be considered insane if they asked to watch TV at 
their desks are going online in droves. It's really quite amazing.
   -The Word Detective

Word of the Day (2/14/2001):
Calipygian - (adj.) Characterized by having shapely buttocks.
   www.mailbits.com

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the
religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
   -James Michener

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects
of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up
traffic jams.
   -Mary Ellen Kelly

You reach a certain age and your body doesn't react like it
used to. Fat just jumps on your body. When you're in your
twenties, you can eat a whole bag of Oreo cookies.  Nothing
happens. I'm now in my late thirties. I eat just one and my
butt expands while I'm chewing.
   -Sinbad

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

A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; 
but a man's heart by his head.
   -Lady Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849)

        Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
        The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
        But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
        And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the
Messiah, come to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
        But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
   -Illusions

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation
has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more
efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" 
   -Adolph Hitler 1935

The most expensive bottle of wine was a 1787 Chateau Lafite claret 
that sold for $136,248.00.  The most spent on a glass of wine 
was $1453.00 for the first glass of Beaujolais Nouveau 1993.

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
   -Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman", November 26, 1792

Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.  They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
   -a fortune

Be aware that a halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose. 
   -Dan McKinnon

I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. 
   -M.C Escher (1898-1972)

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful 
to us than the injury that provokes it.
   -Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

"Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands."
   -Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina)

Science is built with facts as a house is with stones--but a collection of
facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. 
   -Jules Henry Poincare (1854-1912)

Being a grownup means you can go into a resteraunt any
time you want and order french fries.  And you don't.
   -Barbara's Old College Roommate

Great minds discuss idea,
Average minds discuss events,
Small minds discuss people.
   -Eleanor Rooseveldt [attr]

Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes.
   -Washington Irving

The Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children,
the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.  It does not
include the beauty of our poetry or the strength or our marriages; the
intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our
learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it
measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
   -Robert Kennedy

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is deep. 
   -Saul Bellow

I'd rather be rejected for what I am
than loved for what I'm not.
   -Winston Clark (from the musical Out!)

An unsupervised teenager with a modem is as 
dangerous as an unsupervised teenager with a gun. 
   -Arizona State Attorney Gail Thackeray

Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would?
Don't you know there would be an American Air-bottling Association?
And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions 
to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air?
   -Robert Ingersoll

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. 
I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the 
devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.
   -Nick Petreley

Life is short.  Do what you want to.
   -Crosswords

...before TV, the only entry kids had into the adult world was through reading, 
and by the time they were able to read adult literature, they were largely ready
to deal with it. Now we have elementary students regularly exposed to all the
world's problems and faults through the "magic box" every day.
   -Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

When did the oldies stations stop playing 
Bing Crosby and start playing David Crosby?
   -Hans VanBuitenen

So great has been the endurance, so incredible the achievement, that, as
long as the sun keeps a set course in heaven, it would be foolish to
despair of the human race.
   -Ernest L. Woodward

I just got junk mail from this organization that wants me to
save the forest. I sent them back a letter saying stop sending
me the junk mail and save the forest yourself.
   -Linda Herskovic

Last night Rusty pointed out a waitress who was taking orders at the next table.
He said that four years ago she was married, had a fourteen-year-old daughter, 
and was the school system's consultant on dyslexia. It was summer.  She and her 
husband were having a drink in a bar in Aransas Pass. Her husband went to the 
rest room and while he was gone a man at the other end of the bar said, "Hi. 
Would you like to come with me to Mexico?" On the spot she walked out. 
She lived with the man for three years in Guatemala. Even more unexpected 
than the story was the reaction at our table. We were all staring at the woman 
as if she were a heroine. A time comes when you need to clean house. No, you need 
to go even further, you need to burn the house down with yourself inside it. 
Then you must walk from the fire and say, I have no name. 
   -Hugh Prather (from Notes on Love and Courage)

"Hall is a country banker and as honest as the present conditions permit."
   -Ed Clarke, introducing the Texas banker Walter Hall

Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind.
   -Timothy Fuller

Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
   -Shirley MacLaine

I have never known a man to make running noises...they move 
faster than the speed of light, or else remove their shoes
and tiptoe away on little sock feet.
   -MB

You don't manage people.  You manage things; you lead people.
   -Grace Hopper

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are
about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they
mean they are going to make money out of it. 
   -Mary McCarthy

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.  Take off all your
envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.
   -Glenn Clark

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. 
   -James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

But somehow the social conservative case that the country is a moral abyss -- 
that we're all sunk in sin, the sorriest set of humans since Sodom and Gomorrah, 
rotten to the core, unrivalled in hedonism since the palmiest days of the late
Roman Empire, and so on and so forth -- seems just a bit . . . how to say this? 
. . . well, wrong.  I don't know about your friends and neighbors, but mine are 
exceptionally nice.
   -Molly Ivins

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work,
pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without
morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics
without principle. 
   -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

SCCS: the source motel!  Programs check in, and they never check out!
   -Ken Thompson

... 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

Peering into the liberal mind is like looking into a writhing
snake-pit, except that snakes are generally cleaner.
   -Michael Jones

Here is the real difference between a liberal and a conservative:

A conservative is a person who, seeing a man drowning 50 feet off shore,
throws him a 25 foot rope, and encourages him to swim the remaining
distance for the good of his soul.

A liberal is a person who sees a man drowning 25 feet off shore.  He throws
the man a 50 foot rope, snakes it perfectly over the victim's shoulder...
and then drops his end, and walks off to do another good deed.
   -Seen in Readers' Digest a long time ago

Those who will not reason are bigots, 
those who cannot are fools, 
those who dare not are slaves.  
   -Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The Dopeler Effect:  The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter if they come at you rapidly.
   -Click 'n' Clack (11/27/1999 on NPR radio station WSHU)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
  -Friedrich Nietzsche

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few
are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles
fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
   -Sydney J. Harris

Television is democracy at its ugliest. 
   -Paddy Chayefsky

There are two kinds of companies: 
Good ones ask you to think for them.
The others tell you to think like them.
Once you see that, it's easy to tell whether you're in the right place.
   -Benjy Feen
 
Based on records prior to the summer [1999] break,
   29 members of Congress have been accused of spousal abuse
    7 have been arrested for fraud
   19 have been accused of writing bad checks
  117 have bankrupted at least 2 businesses
    3 have been arrested for assult
   71 have credit reports so bad they can't qualify for a credit card
   14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
    8 have been arrested for shoplifting
   21 are current defendants in lawsuits, and in 1998 alone, 
   84 were stopped for drunk driving, but released after they claimed Congressional immunity.    
   -Peter Langston, from Capitol Hill Blue

You want moral leadership?  Try the clergy.  It's their job.
   -Molly Ivins

In the final analysis there is no solution to man's progress but
the day's honest work, the day's honest decisions, the day's
generous utterances and the day's good deed.
   -Clare Booth Luce

"You've got questions?  We've got answers."
   -A Radio Shack ad
"Yeah, and most of them are 'Call tech support.'!"
   -My son's wry observation

Bureaucracy destroys initiative.  There is little that bureaucrats hate more
than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the
old routines.  Improvements always makes those at the top of the heap look
inept.  Who enjoys appearing inept?
   -A Guide to Trial and Error in Government, Bene Gesserit Archives

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
   -Aesop

Do not meddle with the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
   -Anonymous

I never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready 
booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. 
   -Walt Whitman, American poet (1819-1892)

I love the way vendors talk. No matter what happens, it's always good 
news. If their mother died, the press release would talk about her 
expanding her presence in heaven and taking on new challenges in the 
other world.
   -Doug Barney

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"

If Men TRULY Ran The World...
24. At the end of the work day a whistle would blow and you would jump out of 
your window and slide down the tail of a brontosaurus and right into your car.

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people
from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item,
with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
   -Barbara Kingsolver from Animal Dreams
 
Baloney is the unvarnished lie laid on so thick you hate it; 
blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it.
   -Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (1954)

Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language have so
long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with
little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken
for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to
persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but
the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. -John Locke,
English Philosopher (1632-1704) [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding] (1690)

"Most documentation starts as hastily scrawled notes from
 sleep-deprived developers who weren't necessarily hired for their keen
 communication skills.  Those notes are then fleshed out by recently
 graduated English majors who have spent their last four years immersed
 in works of fiction.  The results are then passed on to the marketing
 department whose job it is to make sure that no word or phrase will
 reflect unfavorably on the product ("I don't think that the word
 'Basic' properly communicates the exciting nature of the product.  Why
 don't we call it 'Visual Zesty?!'").  It is then beset by lawyers who
 finish the job by making sure that they haven't explicitly promised
 that the product will actually do anything.  By the time the
 documentation gets into your hands, it has been so sanitized for your
 protection and generalized beyond recognition that you usually have to
 go out and buy a 3rd-party manual (that was, more likely than not,
 written by the same non-technical technical writer who wrote the
 original documentation) in a vain attempt to get an unbiased,
 unexpurgated, and unfiltered view of just how you're really supposed to
 use the stuff."
   -Introduction, About The "@ Novell" Series, November 3, 1998, offering
    the inside scoop on computer documentation.

"Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less or your next one is free!"
   -Painted on a Minuteman missle in the Delta 9 silo in South Dakota

"With faith in God, we kill!"
   -Graffiti on a Serbian wall, as reported by NPR News
    on the show 'All Things Considered', July 26, 1999

"They'd cage a rainbow if they could trap one!"
   -My 13-year-old son, looking at a pair of bald eagles encaged at a zoo
"But think of how many more visitors we'd get if we could display a rainbow!"
   -The response of a zoo worker when I related his remark to her

"I don't care what she does or where she goes, 
as long as she comes home and sits on my face."
   -J.A.

Last night my girlfriend was rhapsodising about her new apartment.
"It's so close to everything!" she gushed.  "It's even in walking 
distance to a gas station!"  We were both silent for a few seconds,
and then she quietly said: "That doesn't make sense, does it?"

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
   -Ogden Nash

Whatever you do, you need courage.  Whatever course you decide upon, 
there is always someone to tell you you are wrong.  There are always 
difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics 
are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to the end, 
requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs. 
   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have worked at full speed since May.  And that is I'm
persuaded the root and source and origin of all health and
happiness, provided of course that one rides work as a man rides
a great horse, in a spirited and independent way; not a drudge,
but a man with spurs to his heels.
   -Virginia Woolf, writing in her journal about her life as a
       publisher and writer.

A + B + C = Success if A = Hard Work, B = Hard Play, C = Keeping your mouth shut. 
   -Albert Einstein

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there, that's disgrace.
   -Anonymous

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably,
and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living
pleasurably. 
   -Epicurus (B.C. 341-270)

"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump. Piglet, meet me in transporter room three.
Christopher Robin, you have the bridge."

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of
getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into
small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
   -Mark Twain

As I sat in the supermarket office and waited for the cops to arrive,
a thought came to me. Maybe when they say "No purchase necessary,"
it's like some kind of code or something, and you're not supposed to
dump cereal all over the aisle to get the prize. Maybe if they hadn't
taken away my little "Crunch-Berry Decoder," I could have figured it
out.
   -Nick DeCamp

"We have produced, consumed, and disposed of more things in 
 the last fifty years than in all the rest of history combined."
   -Countdown to the Millennium

Overheard: "People keep saying they have a problem with me.
            Why is that?  I've never had a problem with me."

The most powerful force in the world is that of a frisbe straining to land
under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck").

Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leds to suffering.
   -Yoda (in The Phantom Menace)

Well, I see by the scowl on the rat's face that it is time
for me to get out of here before the iron gates are lowered
and I am left crying for a cask of amontillado.
   -L.F.

Under deadline pressure for the next week.  If you want something, it
can wait.  Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic...

Starting next week, all passwords will be entered in International Morse Code.

..."the 30 percent who earn poverty or near-poverty wages, have been getting the rawest deal.  
'It is a stupid society that runs an experiment to see what its breaking points are.'" 
   -Molly Ivans, quoting Lester Thurow, economist

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we make ourselves happy, but
how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.
   -Immanual Kant

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life
when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
   -D. Elton Trueblood

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: You find the present tense and the
past perfect.
   -Anonymous

Annex Canada now! We need the room, and who's going to stop us? 
   -Tom Neff

Nuclear war would really set back cable. 
   -Ted Turner

I'll tell you what kind of guy I was. If you ordered a boxcar full 
of sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, 
you could consider the order filled. 
   -Robert Mitchum

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

Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and Violence. 
   -anonymous

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

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. 
   -Paul Beatty

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". 
   -Allen Smith

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

Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also 
the worst vegetable of next year. 
   -Steve Rubenstein

Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the little 
colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the 
original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, 
this means the puzzle is solved. 
   -Steve Rubenstein

To be is to do. 
   - I. Kant
To do is to be. 
   - A. Sartre
Do bi do bi do.
   - F. Sinatra
Yabba-Dabba-Doo! 
   - F. Flinstone

If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same? 
   -anonymous

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. 
   -ibid

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. 
   -ibid

Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also 
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. 
   -you guessed it... ibid!

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. 
   -of course

Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. 
   -so I guess this would come from Paul somebody...

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be 
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a 
series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of 
food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection 
increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the 
affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no 
circumstances can the food be omitted. 
   -Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour

I REALLY like Bugs Bunny. I think I just found out why. A local weekly had 
an article on the wascally wabbit's 50th birthday party this year, and they 
had the following quote about the animation studio where Bugs Bunny cartoons 
were created... "It's not every workplace that allows you to have an autographed 
picture of Christ on the wall." 
   -Scott Lieberman

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the
hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
   -Helen Adams Keller

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.
   -Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

"To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing."
   -Eva Young

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak
which resists it; and so, in great calamities, it sometimes happens that
light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind
sooner than those of a loftier character. 
   -Walter Scott (1771-1832)

"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a
virgin in the whole organization."   
   -Mayor Vincent 'Buddy' Cianci 
    on an ACLU suit to have a city nativity scene removed

                                      
"When people have acupuncture, do wax dolls die?

                                               
Foreign aid: A system where the poor people of a rich country
             give money to the rich people of a poor country.

                
What can be the reason for so much disagreement?  The only reason is that
the essential truth is so divided and torn into so many pieces that it is
often lost in the strife.  One party has truth; another also has some 
truth, but each thinks it has the whole truth and, therefore, tries to 
reject that of the other, imagining it is error. 
   -George de Benneville

Rule #10: Do not lean the bike over on its sidestand when the sidestand
          is not down.  
   -From Laura Lemay's How to Live with a Neurotic Motorcycle

The San Jose Mercury News reported in March on some working models of the
Defense Department's "micro air vehicles" including one helicopter that can
fit inside a peanut shell. Each micro air vehicle carries cameras, sensors,
transmitters and antennas.  
   -News of the Weird  8/28/97 New Haven Advocate

Everything I say is my own opinion and does not even attempt to represent  
the  policies,  positions,  or views  of my employer...  or anybody else. 
Also, please be advised that I suffer from transitive neural connectivity  
failure,  due to an intermittently  diminished level of  C8H10N4O2  in my  
hemodynamic conveyance system.   I change my mind quickly and frequently, 
and sometimes I say things just for the hell of it.

"A Snark He Fry"

Koan:  Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Not one of us ever grows up to be what he intended to be.  Not one of us 
fulfills his own expectations. We are all our own children, in that sense.
At some point, somewhere, we have to stop making demands. 
   -John D. MacDonald  (well, Travis McGee, really!...)

"We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to  
the future.  We cannot afford to drag forward, across the years that are  
to come, the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of 
the past." 
   -Winston Churchill

Q: Why do chicken coops have two doors?       
A: Because if they had four doors they'd be chicken sedans.

Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer.  It has a
150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a
screen resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels, relies entirely on voice
recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's
the first question that the computer community asks?  "Is it PC compatible?"

In the land of the dark the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
   -Egyptian Book of the Dead  (P.S.  Thank you, Jerry)

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

"Humans are kind, intelligent, well-adjusted creatures.
Until you get to know them."  
   -Dogbert

"I have nothing against humans, really- except that they're not dogs, but
they can't help that."  
   -my daughter, who is a dog fancier

I am looking for information regarding your most powerful firewall and
filter software. Do you have any suggestions? If possible in Japanese.
Purchase honorable wirecutters. Implement between router and csu/dsu.

Unencrypted e-mail is like a postcard chiseled in stone. 
   -Lauren Weinstein

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with the
degree of one's personal interest in the issue.  When we are not directly
concerned, our morality overflows.  
   -Richard S. Gilbert

"We need your fax number in order to respect your wishes not to
receive unsolicited faxes."      
   -from a Microsoft web page.

Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves
must pass. 
   -Confucius

Said a hunted fox followed by twenty horsemen and a pack of twenty hounds,
"Of course they will kill me. But how poor and how stupid they must be.
Surely it would not be worth while for twenty foxes riding on twenty asses
and accompanied by twenty wolves to chase and kill one man." 
   -Kahlil Gibran

The future is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.
   -L. P. Hartley

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

Heard on public radio: "And now, we will listen to the story of someone who
played with the forces of darkness and unleashed evil upon the world.   No, 
I'm not talking about Bill Gates.  We will now hear 'The Sorcerer's       
Apprentice' by Paul Dukas."  
   -David Bouchier

[Bill] Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position
in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information.
And that's profitable by definition. How would you like to own the
printing press?   
   -Christopher Dixon, Paine Webber media analyst

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"She would hold a grudge until it died of old age.
Then she would have it stuffed and mounted."  
   -David Weber

My web page designers ascended to the next evolutionary level,         
and all I got was this lousy pudding recipe!

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE10E510CC98D444AA08E1324
'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.
'No but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode,
but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter 
here. But in common English this is what it says:'     
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

A man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has
based it.  
   -Arthur H. Sulzberger

Congress shall make no law restricting the size of integers that may be 
multiplied together, or the number of times that an integer may be
multiplied by itself, or the modulus by which an integer may be reduced.
   -Eric Norman

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to
extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.
   -Molly Ivins

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 illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
   -Henry Kissinger

To read the front pages, you might conclude that Americans are mostly out
for themselves, venal, grasping and mean-spirited.    ...   But you can't
travel the back roads very long without discovering a multitude of gentle
people doing good for others with no expectation of gain or recognition.
   -Charles Kuralt

 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.
The gods gave man love and he invented marriage.

It was the kind of store where you could buy your weight in a single jar of
mayonaise.  
   -Charisse Madlock

Auto-Docking WARNING: Objects in Mir are closer than they appear!

...when you get to monopoly status, you start to develop odd things because
you have no competitors to guage yourself [sic].   Microsoft Word now [has]
the ability to control how you underline misspelled words.   You can have a 
jagged red line or a wavy magenta line.   What are they going to do [next]-
make it twirl and fade to black?  
   -Larry Ellison

Yeh baby, that's the way to do it.  
Software for nothing and the source is free. 
I want my linux or my B S D... 
   -Brothers in (Acorn) ARMs. (and me.)                                                                     

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.              
   -R. Serling

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. 
   -Jeanette Rankin

"Project to connect New York to rest of world gains support." 
Headline about proposed underwater freight tunnel linking NJ and NYC

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
If I passed algebra but failed calculus, what does that say about me? 
In response, thus spake the Oracle: You do it discretely but not continuously.

I question the stability of papers.  I know they aren't necessarily where I  
put them. They may slink away under cover of darkness or transform into
vapor and waft out the door.  Where I left them is not usually where I find
them.   
   -Ruth Cherry    [in Newsweek, 3/3/97 p. 16

Here is another pilot fish who, while still feeding on the parasites which
attack the whale, dreams of a "perfect" world in which there are no whales
or parasites.   
   -Rabbi Haim Cassorla

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

"We don't do pure research here.  We do 80% research and 20% playing
practical jokes on each other."  
   -Patrick D. Scannell

We take risks, not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us.

Salm-on-ing \`sam-on-ing\ (v): Coined 11/15/96 by Henry Farkas
A network condition in which every packet travels through the wire(s) with
a transmission or response time that indicates that it is working as hard
as a salmon swimming upstream against a heavy current during spawning
season.  Successful packets shall be known as "hero packets".  Dropped
packets (the majority) shall be known as "dead fish", and the percentage
of "dead fish" shall indicate how badly the network "stinks".

In Samoa, when elementary schools were first established, the natives
developed an absolute craze for arithmetical calculations. They laid aside
their weapons and were to be seen going about armed with slate and pencil,
setting sums and problems to one another and to European visitors. The
Honourable Frederick Walpole declares that his visit to the beautiful
island was positively embittered by ceaseless multiplication and division.
   -R. Briffault

WYDSIWGY - The first rule of computer security:     
What You Don't See Is What Gets You.  
   -Martin Hepworth

Slatkin's Theorem: By general agreement, nothing is better than eternal       
happiness.  But clearly, a cheese sandwich is better than nothing.      
Therefore, a cheese sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

96.37% of all statistics are made up.

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?  
A: Two.  One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with
   brightly colored machine tools.

Q:  What do you get if you cross a tsetse fly with a mountain climber?
A:  Nothing.  You can't cross a vector with a scalar.

Crazy?   Some people think walking down the street muttering to yourself is
crazy.  I'll tell you what crazy is.  Crazy is walking down the street with 
half a cantalope on your head, saying:  "I'm a hamster, I'm a hamster".
Now that's crazy.      
   -Agent WD-40, in Spy Hard

I speak only for myself.  
I don't speak for my employer, or the other voices in my head.

Windows 95: n. - 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch 
to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor,  
written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.      
   -rec.humor.funny, 8/97  (via Shirley)

"This coffee is fit for a king.  Here, King!"  
   -Henny Youngman 1907

I searched through rebellion, drugs, diets, mysticism, religions,
intellectualism and much more, only to begin to find...that truth
is basically simple -and feels good, clean and right.
   -Chick Corea

Majority, n.:
        That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
   -Richard Nixon, in an interview with David Frost, 19 May 1977

And then he realized why he was thinking like this.  It was because he wanted there to be
conspirators.  It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad
and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy.  You had to cling to this
sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things
happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children
bedtime stories, were capable of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary
people.  It was so much easier to blame it on Them.  It was bleakly depressing to
think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault.  If it was
Us, what did that make Me?   After all, I'm one of Us.  I must be.  I've certainly
never thought of myself as one of Them.  No one ever thinks of themselves as one of
Them.  We're always one of Us.  It's Them that do the bad things.
   -Terry Pratchett

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs
less than it's operating manual.
   -Ibid

Good judgement comes from experience.  Most worthwhile experiences come from bad judgement.
   -Dusty

If you think that [the] Creator had no sense of fun, I can only ask you, why do men have nipples?
   -Jim Hightower

Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more. 
   -Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk,...it's all a miracle.  I have adapted the technique of living life from  
miracle to miracle.
   -Arthur Rubinstein

  
During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about
government should begin: "Look out! They're about to smack you around again!"
   -Molly Ivans

"One unexpected result came from the seismic experiment recording the impact of Intrepid on the surface after we
had jettisoned it. The entire Moon rang like a gong, vibrating and resonating for almost on hour after the impact." 
   -Cortwright, Edgar M., Apollo Expeditions To The Moon, By C. Conrad,Jr./ A.B. Shepard, Jr., U.S. History, 1 Sep 1990.

But they are useless. They can only give you answers.
   -Picasso, on computers.

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

O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen! 
   -Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Freud on Seuss  ROFL!

Statistics are like bikinis --they show a lot, but hide the important stuff." 
   -Anonymous

"I remember some cold nights in Minnesota where you'd put some peanut butter on your penis and say hello to the dog."
   -Anonymous (by request, though I can't imagine why...  :-)

Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial "we." 
   -Mark Twain

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. 
   -Saba

Do you want to know how unix works? Then, echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sbA0D4D465452snlbx'|dc 
Can you read that?   Then, echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc 
   -Ibid

A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, 
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. 
     She found a good way
     To combine work and play: 
She sells C shells by the seashore. 
   -Ibid

"I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." 
   -Clarence Darrow

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. 
   -Abraham Lincoln

Here are The Twelve Truths of Networking

"I take confidence in the belief that there is a solution, 
other than that I have nothing going for me."
   -Matthew T. Beitler

Take the baby out to the other room and hit him with the fish!
   -An anonymous parent

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like 
the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. 
   -Simone Weil

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, drive home safely... 
and don't take any s**t from anybody!
   -Billy Joel, closing out a concert in Hartford, CT

One winter evening, when the innovative engineer R. Buckminster Fuller
was drinking tea by the fireplace of Prof. Hugh Kenner, three-year-old
Lisa Kenner prolonged her bedtime farewell with the question: "Bucky,
why is the fire hot?"  Kenner writes: Some instinct told Lisa he was 
the man to ask.  His answer, as he took her on his lap, began, like
most of his answers, some distance away from the question.  "You remember,
darling, when the tree was growing in the sunlight?"  On arms like
upgroping branches, his hands became clusters of leaves as he described
their collecting the sunlight, processing its energies into sugars,
drawing them down into a stocky trunk.  "Then the men cut it down. and
and sawed it into logs.  And what you see now"--he pointed to the
crackling hearth--"is the sunlight, unwinding from the log."
   -New York Times Magazine via Readers' Digest

Let's face it, a little humility is in order from all of us.  I mean,
aren't we slightly too ridiculous for anything else? Do any of us get
where we are going because we know where to go?
   -John Rosenthal

On each race is laid the duty to keep alight its own lamp of mind as its
part in the illumination of the world. To break the lamp of any people is
to deprive it of its rightful place in the world festival. 
   -Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet (1861-1941) [Rabindra Rachonabali]

They asked me to go in front of the Reagans. I'm not used to going in 
front of President Reagan, so we went out behind the Bushes. 
   -Dan Quayle, Former U.S. Vice President (1947-)

Quotes from my mom during a recent visit:
   "I hate flying.  The pilots are always drunk!"
   "There's nobody in Boca Raton to talk to!"
   "Cruise?  I'm not taking no cruise!  The ships always go down, then they lose
    your luggage!"

    Sue:    We won't have a moon tonight.
    My mom: You don't know; we might.
    Sue:    No, we had a full moon 2 weeks ago.  Tonight is the new moon.
    My mom: Oh, I don't believe in that stuff!

"There is a very fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased this line."
  -Oscar Levant

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

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

Don't spend two dollars to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the
Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger.
Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents.
   -William Coronel

"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
  -Robert A. Heinlein

"Let's face the obvious. Yesterday we were nerds. Today we're the cognitive elite. 
 Let's conquer."
 -Chester G. Edwards

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
  -J. Edgar Hoover

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is;
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments 
that differentiate me from a doormat.
   -Rebecca West, 1913

"Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen."
   -Albert Einstein

"And if you give us any more trouble, I shall visit you in the small hours and
 put a bat up your nightdress."
 -Basil Fawlty

"A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy."
 -Joseph Campbell

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea --massive,
 difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-
 boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
 -Gene Spafford,1992

And the following quotes are from our good friend Ann Onymous:

Your mouse has moved.   Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take
effect.
               Reboot now?  [ OK ]

Microsoft Windows:  computing While U Wait

I feel like a genocidal maniac when emacs asks me if I want to kill 10789
characters.

I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than
eating soup with a knife.

"To know recursion, you must first know recursion"

Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the most important meal
of the day.

Don't have awk? Use this simple sh emulation:
#!/bin/sh
echo 'Awk bailing out!'
exit 2

Whip me.  Beat me.  Make me maintain AIX.

Of course my password is the same as my pet's name.
My macaw's name was Q47pY!3, but I change it every 90 days.

BREAKFAST.EXE    Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding

Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.....

Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...

All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.   {I actually got this
error once!  -henry}

Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...

Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven...

The world is coming to an end... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!

Life is like a litterbox.  You don't want to go digging around in past events.
   -My (12-year-old) son

Technology gives us cancer, and then we want technology to cure us.
Technology is a big dog with glittering eyes chasing it's tail in
a long and complicated dream.
   -Poe Ballantine

Some things I've learned:

   * Never underestimate the power of a single red sock in the laundry.
   * Never put stickers on suede.
   * If you must tape your windows because a hurricane, take the masking tape off 
     immediately after the storm is over.
   * Wait 24 hours before you make what an objective observer might call a major purchase.  
     No matter how much you want it.  No matter how good the deal is.  No matter what.
   * Nobody in the store is an objective observer.
   * Once in a lifetime deals aren't.
   * Change your vehicle's oil every 3,000 miles.  No matter what.
     This way, no matter how busy you are, you'll still manage to change it every 5,000 miles.
   * No, you will not remember; write it down.
   * No, you will not remember; put it on the calendar now.
   * Keep a pad and pencil by the phone.  Get their name.  At the very beginning of the
     conversation.  Every single time.  Write down what they said, and the date.
   * Keep the records until the problem is solved.
   * Counting to 10 when you're angry really does work.  If it doesn't work for you count to 20.
   * Make backups.  And an emergancy startup disk.  Make regular backups.  Frequently.

Economics and politics are the governing powers of life today,
and that's why everything is screwy.
   -Joseph Campbell

Once I was told I should shoot for the stars, and look at me now: 
Mars is in my grasp!  Is this a great country or what!!!!!
   -Ralph Guzman  (A SysAdmin, upon learning that he would inherit 
                   a machine with the hostname 'mars')

People have forgotten, but we Dogs remember.

We remember, through our innate racial memories, the days when our 
race and the world were both young, the days when People still stayed 
in the trees, and when all of our kind lived in the woods and the fields,
in the awful, desolate lonliness--in seperateness.  When we ate only what 
we caught and killed, and the night shadows and the night smells were
around us, and the Night Devils rode the high howling winds, and there
was no light when the sun went down except the thin skittery moonlight.
Nor was there any warmth when the stars came out but in the warmth of
our fur and our tails, in which we buried our cold twitching noses.

We Dogs remember, and at night, sleeping across the doorway or behind 
the chair, we dream; and our sleep is broken by the momory of separateness,
and we whimper and try to run from the horror.  We Dogs remember.

We remember when the night comes down and we are out and not in, and the
Night Devils that no Dog can catch ride the winds, and then we point our
noses at the moon, which is the enemy of all Dogs, and we sing our 
ancient song of desolation and loneliness.  And so do our cousins, the
wolves and coyotes and foxes, the ones who still cling to the old customs..
   -Greyfriar's Flannel Petticoat  (A.K.C. # WA-339236)
            (With her Special Person, Roland A. Browne)
    From  The Intelligent Dog's Guide to People Owning

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
   -anonymous

When one person receives without working
another must work without receiving.
   -anonymous

....the First Ammendment was designed to protect offensive speech, 
since governments never try to ban the other kind.
   -Mike Godwin

Beer -Wine -Guns -Ammo -Picnic Supplies
   -sign at a roadside convenience store in south Texas

By one estimate, the average American spends 1,600 hours a year either 
driving or earning the money to support a car, and drives an average
of 6,000 miles a year.  That works out to about 4 miles traveled
per hour spent --the equivalent of a normal walking pace.
   -Edward Tenner  Why Things Bite Back
 
Sometimes I jest sits here and types.  Sometimes I jest sits here and
laughs for no apparent reason.  Scares the bejezus out of my cubemates.
   -Bill Stout
 
"Why not?" "Yeah."
   -The last words of Timothy Leary, who dropped out due to cancer, at age 75.
 
It's easy to play any musical instrument;
all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time
and the instrument will play by itself.
   -Johann Sebastian Bach
 
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
   -Abbie Hoffman 
 
If you watch a game, it's fun.  
If you play it, it's recreation.  
If you work at it, it's golf.
   -Bob Hope
 
They riseth in the early morning,
They goeth forth full of hope,
Mighty are their prospects.
When the day is spent they returneth
Smelling of strong drink-
And the truth is not in them.
   -a sign pinned to a wall of a Minnesota hunting lodge 

Some birthdays are special.  They really get you.
   -Carl Kraft
 
In Dance We Trust
   -Marguerite Plank
 
"I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust.  That's
 admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that.  But even
 considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So
 I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we
 can make it. You get me?" 
   -Leo Bulero/PKD, via proff@suburbia.net
 
"Tommy Sucks At Pinball" and I "Don't Care Who You Are"
   -The handwritten titles of two recently discovered Keith Moon drum tracks
 
Note that this is not a vulnerability with Java, per se. It is
really a vulnerablility with DNS that Java does not check for.
   -CIAC note 96-01
 
"You go to heaven...  God sneezes...  What do you say ?"
   -Peter Houppermans peter@phobos.co.uk 
 
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
   -Max Weinrich   From Mat Simmons' siggie
 
Trying to have sex at my age is like trying to play pool with a rope.
   -George Burns 
 
Jeff correctly points out a major potential problem with [this policy].  
At the risk of agreeing with him, I would like to comment.
   -the notoriously controversial "Dr. Fred" -
 
Technician 1: They've changed the drop dead date again.
Technician 2: It's starting to become a drop dead window.
 
Lawsuits follow money, and money has found the internet.  
Who can sue who, and for how much, is still being worked out.
   -Tim Kolar
 
Is time travel a thing of the past?
   -heard somewhere
 
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
   -Noelie Altito

I am the warrior God of Atlantis!
   -an acolyte at church, marching up the center aisle with a large cnadle,
     apparently not realizing that his comment to the boy beside him could be heard
 
The Cat's Diary 

Day 751:          My captors continue  to torment me  with bizarre dangling 
objects.  They eat lavish meals in my presence while I am forced to subsist 
on dry cereal.   The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of eventual 
escape --that, and the satisfaction  I get from  occasionally ruining some 
piece of their furniture.  

I fear I may be going insane.  Yesterday, I
ate a houseplant. Tomorrow I may eat another.
 
Never dance in wool socks.
   -(this is something I found out the hard way)
 
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; 
they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
   -A Bit of Fry and Laurie -
 
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
   -multiple sources
 
The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in
many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls
the "Four F's": 1. fighting;  2. fleeing;  3.feeding; and  4. mating.
   -Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course
 
What is a committee?  A group of the unwilling, 
picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
   -Richard Harkness, The New York Times
 
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles
closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there
are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. 
   -Ransom K. Ferm
 
Madness takes its toll.  Please have exact change.
   -attr: John Owen 
  
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench 
to pound in the correct screw. 
   -ibid
 
The graduate with a Science degree asks,                 "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks,            "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks,        "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
   -John, again
 
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and 
years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the 
worst movies in the history of the world.
   -Dave Barry
 
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; 
I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. 
   -A. Whitney Brown
 
A great many people think they are thinking 
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 
   -William James
 
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon 
full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
   -Andrew Tannenbaum
 
There's so much comedy on television.  
Does that cause comedy in the streets?
   -Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate
 
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's
life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if
there are men on base.
   -Dave Barry
 
I am sick unto death of obscure English towns that exist seemingly for the
sole accommodation of these so-called limerick writers --and even sicker of
their residents, all of whom suffer from physical deformities and spend their
time dismembering relatives at fancy dress balls. 
   -Editor of the Limerick Times (Limerick, Ireland) 
 
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
   -6&nL#bi~8r
 
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:  No matter how great your triumphs or how
tragic your defeats ---approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
 
668: The Neighbor of the Beast
 
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
   -Emo Phillips
 
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
   -Anonymous
 
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
   -F. P. Jones
 
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination
to do so.
   -Douglas Adams, _Last Chance to See_ 
 
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
 
Boundary, n.  In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations,
separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
 
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
 
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
   -George Carlin
 
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Back off --I'm a postal worker!
Visualize whirlled peas.
Visualize using your turn signals.
Hang up and drive!
Hung like Einstein.  Brains of a horse.
Guns don't kill people.  Postal workers do.
You left your stove on.
I brake for red lights.
   -bumper snickers
 
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible 
will make violent revolution inevitable.
   -John F. Kennedy
 
Life may have no meaning.  Or even worse,
it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
   -Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
   -ibid
 
Her kisses left something to be desired --the rest of her.
   -anonymous: and for a darned good reason! 
 
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
   -Mark Twain
 
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1.            Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2.                          Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
   -David Letterman 
 
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, 
"I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied, 
"That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress." 
 
For three days after death, hair and fingernails 
continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
   -Johnny Carson
 
A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least
expect it.  That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
-In the August 1993 issue, page 9, of PS magazine, the Army's
  magazine of preventive maintenance
 
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 "The Book of Daniel"

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: Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?
 
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs.
   -E. Grebenik 
 
Old Yiddish proverb: "If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides."
 
Don't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
   -Old Farmer's Almanac

G:   "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?" 
EB:  "Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."
   -Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4
 
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. 
   -Plutarch
 
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a
voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
   -Charlie Brown
 
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
   -Salvador Dali
 
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, 
but they've always worked for me.
   -Hunter S. Thompson
 
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
   -Mark Twain
 
"Time's fun when you're having flies."
   -Kermit the Frog
 
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears this is true.
   -James Branch Cabell

A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good
for fear he'll feel worse when he feels better.
   -H. Allen Smith

He's beaten everyone on earth.  Saint Peter, rack 'em up!
   -the widow of Minnesota Fats, after his funeral
 
By the time you get to whereever whatever it was was, it's gone!
   -Laura Sloat (A coworker, attempting to understand seemingly inexplicable traffic clumps) 
 
Christmas canceled.  Joseph confessed.
   -rec.humor.funny 
 
Here at the frontier there are falling leaves.
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups on my table.
   -from the T'ang Dynasty, A.D. 618-906
 
I speak only for myself and not the other voices in my head.
   -siggie, ibelooze@runet.edu \
 
Speed does not kill.  Stopping very quickly kills.
   -heard somewhere
 
Here's a little puzzle for the hypocrites to solve:
Jesus born from Woman, not a man at all involved!
   -Bob Franke
 
When one person receives without working
another must work without receiving.
   -heard somewhere 
 
I keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and I keep knowing what they mean.
   -Lucille Clifton 
 
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
   -Muriel Rukeyser
 
Most of the things worth doing in the world have
been declared impossible before they were done.
   -Louis Brandeis
 
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
  -seen on a siggie
 
Housework: The work your house does not do when you are not home.
 
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction
and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
   -1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
 
Man does.  Woman is.
   -Piers Anthony
 
God is real... unless declared integer.
   -heard somewhere
 
From a Fall issue of Kitchen and Bath Custom Planner
"GE's white-on-white catalogue offers a complete line of all-white 
appliances.  Send for a full-color brochure."
   -Reader's Digest, November, 1995 p. 100

Not to worry, we'll just outlaw all unlicensed cryptography. 
After all, it works in France. 
You don't see weekly terrorist attacks over there any more,now do you ?
   -"Futplex"

His ... argument style makes me want to step outside and hork in the bushes.
   -Robert Hettinga 
 
"According to Enderle, [Dataquest's senior industry analyst,
client/server software], [Microsoft] spent only $US120 million on
developing Windows 95, while it spent $300 million on marketing the
product."  
   -Computerworld, 13th October 1995
 
Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product
that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it. 
   -Will Rogers

Congress shall make no law restricting the size of integers that may be 
multiplied together, or the number of times that an integer may be 
multiplied by itself, or the modulus by which an integer may be reduced.
   -Eric Norman

"I don't know if security explains why the Win95 support Web servers run BSDI
2.0--an Intel-based Unix--rather than Windows NT, which Microsoft insists is
the ideal Web software solution.  Does Redmond know something we don't know?"
   -Robert X. Cringely, INFORWORLD, 9/11/95
 
And in The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin recounts, "Since this 
inexplicable power of a magnatized needle to 'find' the north smacked of 
black magic, common seamen were wary of its powers.  For many decades, the 
prudent sea captain consulted his compass secretly...After the compass 
had lost its occult flavor and become every sailor's everyday tool, it 
came out onto the open deck.  Still, in Colombus's day, a pilot who used 
the magnetic compass might be accused of trafficking with Satan."
   -Kenneth C. Davis - (In his book Don't Know Much About Geography)
    [Whether or not this has any relevance to present-day issues and 
     if so, it's significance, is left as an exercise for the reader.]
 
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. 
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 
   -George Bernard Shaw
 
Nobody's going to listen to you if you just stand there and flap your arms like a fish.
   -Mike McNally (m5@tivoli.com)
 
He who hesitates to act on inside information is lost.
   -Timothy C. May 
 
If insider trading rules are interpreted logically, then failure to make 
a planned trade on the basis of inside information is just as illegal as 
deciding to make some trade on the basis of inside information.  The SEC
should require all insiders to file a daily report, preferably before the
market opens in New York, listing all of their planned transactions for 
that day, so that violations of the "insider non-trading laws" can be 
detected and prosecuted.
   -Tim May (paraphrasing Stew Brownstein)
 
Shit happens.  But an awful lot of shit can be avoided by simply not tailgating.
 
There is no polite way to eat spare ribs.
 
To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!
   -Jesse Jackson 
Huh?
   -me
 
When she's sad, she doesn't even look pretty... she looks Italian!
   -MeC
 
I wish to find where spirituality, politics, community 
and chocolate come together.
   -Gary D. Shapiro
 
....the First Ammendment was designed to protect offensive speech, 
since governments never try to ban the other kind.
 -Mike Godwin
                                       
Hey!  I like this channel!
   -Steven (who's 9 years old) watching a fire in a fireplace
                                        
Prisoner, God has given you good abilities, instead of which you 
go about the country stealing ducks!
   -William Arabin
                                       
When I go I want to go in my sleep like my grandfather, 
not screaming, like the people in his plane.
   -S. Simone
                                       
Common sense must be the most universal of all commodities, because 
every man is convinced that he is posessed with an abundance of it.
   -Rene Descartes
                                       
A luxury, once enjoyed, quickly becomes a necessity.
   -Bill O'Neill
                                       
The difference between theory and practice is bigger in practice than theory.
   -Jay Ashworth
                                       
Guilt is a very peculiar emotion.  As long as you are guilty about
something you are not compelled to change it.  Guilt is like a warm   
bath or, to be rude, it is like masturbation-you can get used to it.
But, in order to live without it, you must get past it.  In order to 
get past it you must act. And, in order to act, you must be conscious. 
You must take great chances-and be responsible for the consequences.
   -James Baldwin
                                                                  
I don't need to take this abuse from you.  I've got hundreds of
people willing to abuse me.
   -Bill Murray  (from Ghostbusters)
                                        
While lifting a ~170 lb. Sun disk drive:
Henry:  Let's just say I'm trying to be macho.
 Eric:   No, I'd say it was a case of testosterone poisoning.
                                        
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
                                        
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
   -Calvin
                                        
"To know that we know what we know, and that we don't know what we 
don't know, that is true knowledge".
   -Confucious 
    (But it sure sounds like Dan Quayle, doesn't it? :-)
                                        
You're not drunk if you can lay on the floor without holding on.
   -Dean Martin
                                        
Hardware, n.:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
   -anonymous
                                        
Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
   -anonymous
                                        
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's. 
It isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
  -Oxford University Press, Edpress News
                                        
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.  
   -anonymous
                                        
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
   -anonymous
                                        
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
                                        
Law of Probable Dispersion:  
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. 
   -Todd Merrill
                                        
Necrophelia means never having to say you're sorry.
                                        
He advised all seekers to examine what each system asked of
the potential initiate, keeping in mind three rules:
   1.  What you are required to believe is what the
       system cannot prove.
   2.  Anything that you are asked to keep secret is of
       more value to the teacher than to the student.
   3.  Any practice that is forbidden offers something
       that the system cannot successfully replace with
       an alternative.
One listener asked: "Don't you believe that giving up the
pleasures of the senses will produce a different conciousness?"
       "My personal experience," Ben replied, "was that it produced
       the conciousness of fanaticism." .... The guru said: "You
       must get beyond pleasure."  Jane answered: "If you think you
       can get beyond pleasure without going through it we are
       definitely on different trips," and left.
   -Camden Benares    Zen Without Zen Masters
                                        
The only measure of your words and your deeds will be the love 
you leave behind you when you're done. 
   -Fred Small
                                       
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them
that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
   -heard somewhere 
                                       
Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.
   -John Cougar
                                       
She's kind.  She's soft.  Her name is Daisy.
The more I deal with women the better I like my sheep.
                                       
Would you say that Richard Nixon had a "Checkered" past?
                                       
"Well, what do you think [laws] are for?  We  want  them to be broken.
There is no way to rule innocent men.  The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals.  Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one  makes  them.  One declares so many things to
be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking 
laws.  ... just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed
nor enforced nor objectively interperted-and you create a nation of
law-breakers ... that's the game."
   -Ayn Rand    Atlas Shrugged p. 411
                                       
We find in the rules laid down by the greatest English judges, who have
been the brightest of mankind, [that] we are to look upon it as more
beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one
innocent person should suffer.  The reason is because it is of more
importance to [the] community that innocence should be protected 
than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and crimes are so 
frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished, and many
times they happen in such a manner that it is not of much consequence
to the public whether they are punished or not.  But when innocence
itself is brought to the bar and condemmed, especially to die, the
subject will exclaim, "It is immaterial to me whether I behave well
or ill, for virtue itself is no security."  And if such a sentiment
as this should take place in the mind of the subject there would be
an end to all security whatsoever.
   -John Adams 
    This was his final argument in defense of the British soldiers 
    accused of commiting murders at the Boston Massacre.
    (This is from James Kunen's book "How Can You Defend Those People".)
                                       
"It breaks my heart to see those stars smashing perfectly good guitars."
   -John Hiatt
                                       
"I mean, no matter how you attempt to twist it, you can't prove that
other people are not hiding who they are when you claim that your
lack of ability to find out who I am means I am hiding something."
   -some clueless net-dweeb, c. 1993
                                        
"From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the
appetite of the tapeworm."
   -Edward Abbey
                                        
"Question Authority and the Authorities will question You!"
   -someone's sig
                                        
I do three kinds of work: Good, Fast and Cheap.  You may pick any TWO.
           I can do good work fast  but it won't be cheap.
           I can do good work cheap but it won't be fast.
           I can do fast work cheap but it won't be good.
                                        
It don't make no sense that that common sense don't make no sense no more.
   -John Prine
                                       
"The Pledge of Allegiance says '..with liberty and justice for all'.    
What part of 'all' don't you understand?"
   -Rep. Pat Schroeder (D) CO
                                       
The more you stare at a computer screen, the more you realize
it only knows what you tell it.
The more you stare at a television, the more you realize 
that you only know what it tells you.
   -James Birkinshaw .sig, Dec 1993 -
    (I stole this from Shirley Peters)
                                       
"The national budget must be balanced.  The public debt must be 
reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and 
controlled.  Payments to foreign governments must be reduced if 
the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn 
to work instead of living on public assistance."
   -Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC 
    (She stole this one from me)
                                       
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of my life and wonder:
"What's going on here?"
   -anonymous
                                        
If, in the last few years, you haven't discarded a major opinion or
acquired a new one, check your pulse.  You may be dead.
   -Gelett Burgess
                                       
There once was a lady named Jude,
Who went to the beach to bathe nude.
Then a man came along,
and unless I am wrong,
You'd expect this last line to be rude.
   -anonymous
                                       
I've learned not to think about my life after 11 pm.
   -anonymous
                                        
Of all the people living in America today:
   22 %   Don't remember the American Bicentenial Celebration.
   33 %   Feel people have  always  been on the moon.
   50 %   Are too young to remember the assasination of JFK.
   66 %   Are not old enough to rmember the Korean War.
   70 %   Don't remember "before TV".
   85 %   Are not old enough to rmember the 1929 stock market crash.
   -Fred Newell -
                                       
"I've got spurs that jingle jangle jingle...."

semper ubi, sub ubi
always wear underwear
                                       
tua mater caligas gerit.
your mother wears combat boots.
                                       
To be or not to be, those are the parameters.
                                       
Is an egotist someone who is always me-deep in conversation?
                                       
What is a CDRom?   3 billion pits arranged in a 3 mile spiral!
   -Gess Shankar
                                       
Objects are just data structures with an attitude.
   -Alex Morrow
                                       
"Get a life?"   Life is for people who can't handle computers!