Journal disposable60's Journal: Dada Ballet I (quotefile, part 1)
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I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
--Albert Einstein
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You must be able to distinguish between what is true and what is real.
-- A. Einstein
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No trees were harmed in the production of this message; however many electrons
were horribly inconvenienced.
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Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness.
-- the Buddha
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Capitalism is fueled by Greed.
Socialism is fueled by Envy.
Which is your sin?
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It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal
-- A. Hitler
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Hate is stronger than logic.
Ignorance is a tool.
Slogans are stronger than arguments.
No one knows the truth.
Everyone thinks they know the truth.
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The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human
imagination
-- Douglas Adams
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Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
-- darthpenguin
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DISCLAIMER: Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an
endorsement of Western industrial civilization.
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Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this: to know so much and have
control over nothing.
-- Herodotus
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I miss the Cold War. At least WW3 was going to be over in the space of a
weekend, and we were fighting to be free. WW4 is going to last the rest of our
lives, and we're only fighting for our own security.
Even if we win, we lose.
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As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
-- Justice William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice
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According to Ford Motor chairman Bill Ford, the company's Volvo subsidiary is
more profitable than its U.S. operation, even though wages and benefits are
significantly higher in Sweden. Government-subsidized health care, child care,
pensions, and other social supports more than make up for the difference.
-- Mr. Smarty Pants
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-12-03/cols_smartypants.html
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[The obsession with predicting Apple's direction is] like IBM in the 60s
and the seventies, when all of the trade rags were committing acts of
stochastic tittilation trying to perceive the direction that an elephant
was going in from a point of view slightly below and in front if its tail.
-- crovira (slashdot ID 10242)
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The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words;
on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-- James D. Nicoll
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We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages
down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new
vocabulary.
-- James D. Nicoll
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As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness
surrounding it.
-- A. Einstein
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If French Fries = Freedom Fries and French Toast = Freedom Toast, I want to
leave the US and go live in Freedom
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THE END OF 'THE WORLD' IS NIGH! It ends at 5:00. And then 'All Things
Considered' comes on.
-- Bucky Katt
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Believe in yourself, drink your school, stay in drugs, and don't do milk!
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Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain that
way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death. Longer if it's
a warm day.
-- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
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WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON
THIS INDIVIDUAL.
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This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
-- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Fat,Dumb, and Happy? I wish, Me and my kids are stuck with the Thin,
Smart and Cynical gene.
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If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
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Support your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
My name is Darth Vader. I *am* your father. Prepare to die!
My name is Oedipus! *I* killed my father, fucked my mother, and I need a hug!
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Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
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You can't reason someone out of something that he didn't reason himself into.
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That's not even wrong...
-- P.A.M. Dirac
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Complexity is the enemy of elegance and power.
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There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
-- Ben Williams
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There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle as
real strength.
--St. Francis de Sales
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Integrity has no need for rules
(copied without attribution)
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Send Lawyers, Guns and Money
The shit has hit the fan!
-- Warren Zevon
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If you're careful enough, nothing bad will ever happen to you.
Neither will anything good.
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What do you know about music, you're not a lawyer...
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A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has
university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
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Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
-- Dread Pirate Roberts to Princess Buttercup in _The Princess Bride_
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It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception,
is composed of others.
-- John Andrew Holmes
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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
-- Ambrose Bierce
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The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
-- David Russell
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Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity
against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen.
-- Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by US Senate, 1797
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[T]he Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion.
-- Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by US Senate, 1797
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Reducing an issue to black/white clears the way for violence.
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Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.
-- Terry Pratchett
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Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
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People who need government to enforce their religion must not have much faith
in it.
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If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat
white guy who is threatened by change.
-- Family Guy
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For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally
won out over it.
-- Elwood P. Dowd
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U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite
Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
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When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad
but they are always blind.
-- Bill Moyers
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I support your right to bear arms, but that doesn't mean I don't think
you're a psycho for owning a murder tool.
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Under W the US is like a big geek: Technically powerful, but not popular.
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I used to think that American militia groups were out of their minds.
Now I'm beginning to wonder.
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Why is it a crime for a citizen to lie to an official, but not for an
official to lie to the citizen?
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Now, I believe, in a democracy--and again, I wouldn't know, I've only lived in
this country...
-- Jon Stewart
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Truth is not determined by majority vote
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You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
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As you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what
I have to say.
--George W. Bush
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Whereas science will continue to try and resolve that open question,
religion would just arbitrarily make up some asinine answer on the
spot, declare itself completely and unquestionably correct, and then
mock anyone who did something so silly as suggest that maybe they
should have actually tried some observations and tests before coming
to a conclusion.
-- the_mad_poster (640772)
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Do you realize that, simply owing to the earth's rotation, you are,
at this moment, moving at a rate of approximately 1000 mph? Probably
less since you are probably not at the equator. Also, Due to the earth's
orbit around the sun, were are traveling at approximately 67000mph.
According to findings of COBE, our galaxy is traveling at about 1.34
million mph.
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Religious ceremonies are unholy.
-- Heraclitus
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Paranoia is the delusion that your enemies are organized.
-- Arthur D. Hlavaty.
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This is the Nineties, Bubba, and there is no such thing as Paranoia. It's all true.
-- Hunter S Thompson
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Let us not forget the most dangerous weapon of them all: The Human Mind.
The only blade more dangerous when dull than when sharp.
-- NarrMaster (fark.com)
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God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones.
-- Douglas Adams
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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't
be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God
question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.
-- John McCarthy
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Political language
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
-- George Orwell
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When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
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Implicit in both of your arguments is the assumption that you can't both be
wrong. I see nothing to support this.
-- ArbitraryConstant (denizen of FARK)
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University politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
-- Henry Kissinger
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But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things,
by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the
way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
-- Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate, Physicist (1918-1988)
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The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit;
faith without a smile; truth that is never seized by doubt.
-- Umberto Eco
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Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a
cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids
dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and
it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of
all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
-- Albert Einstein
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FASCISM: A system of Government which exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with
belligerent nationalism.
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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Russell Baker
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Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant
fountains lie.
-- Shakespeare
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Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin. It's the triumphant twang
of a bedspring.
-- S. J. Perlman
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It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a
virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.
-- Voltaire
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Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes,
but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
-- William H. Beveridge, 1944
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Historically, the Bible has been used to justify some stupefying crimes,
including slavery and genocide. I see no indication that we are any
better at divining the Lord's intent now than we ever were.
-- Molly Ivins
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Those terrorists don't scare me. At least not without the help of my government.
-- Janet Barker, Pedicurist (the Onion 6/2/2004)
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There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen
to the answers.
-- rgmoore on slashdot
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I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger,
the solution is ignorance.
-- Isaac Asimov
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Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a
violent psychopath who knows where you live
-- John F. Woods
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History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are
knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are
always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history
to allow for our current prejudices.
-- Calvin, _Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat_, p152-1
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In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-- George Orwell
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Americans could not be more self absorbed if they were made of equal
parts water and paper towel.
-- Dennis Miller
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Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in
the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen
acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and
corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To
take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm
to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's
self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the
courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed
to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse
not to think at all.
-- Michael Rivero
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Propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to
give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.
-- Michael Rivero
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Churchill said, "Of all the virtues, the greatest is courage, because it
makes the others possible." Well, of all the sins, the worst is envy,
because it permits all the others.
-- Mort Sahl
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Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be
slain, or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that
told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
-- Charles Churchill II
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I looked up the definition of "liberal" in a Random House dictionary.
It gave the synonyms for 'liberal' as 'progressive' 'broad-minded,'
'unprejudiced,' 'beneficent.' The antonyms it offered: 'reactionary'
and 'intolerant.'
-- Walter Cronkite
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Liberals by nature look for information and conservatives look for
ammunition.
-- Al Franken
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We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his
own facts.
-- Patrick Moynihan
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Ideas have power - as long as they are not frozen in doctrine.
-- Bill Moyers
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[T]he great enemy of sensible reform has been, of course, politicians
high from righteousness.
-- William F. Buckley
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Real politics are not possible when people abdicate the responsibility
to think in favor of ideology, because ideology is always the enemy of
thought.
-- Charles Taylor (Salon Magazine 20030428)
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The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish,
cutting the heart asunder.
-- Virginia Woolfe
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Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important
to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-- Isaac Asimov
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The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under
water long enough
-- Texas newspaperman William Brann
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In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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Love is in the offing.
-- The Homicidal Maniac
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Facts are stupid things.
-- President Ronald Reagan
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Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will
shape you.
-- Albert Einstein
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A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
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Knowledge is useful. It can be used for good things. It can be used for
bad things. It isn't possible to remove knowledge from our environment,
and we would be foolish to do so with regard to any piece or class of
information. Destroying knowledge is a bad thing. People who do stupid
things with hazardous materials often die.
-- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die.
-- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
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Vegetables are what food eats.
Fruit are vegetables that fool you by tasting good.
Fish are fast moving vegetables.
Mushrooms are what grows on vegetables when food's done with them.
-- Meat Eater's Credo, according to Jim Williams
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Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
-- Thomas Jefferson
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Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power.
-- Benito Mussolini.
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Power corrupts; PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
-- Vint Cerf
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[I]f there's one thing sure as Bush's fatuity, it's that our creative
corporate execs will find every loophole.
-- Molly Ivins 8/20/2002
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Order is for idiots. Genius can handle chaos.
-- ?
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observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is
neither flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us
some things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical
Inquirer, Vol XII No. 2
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The true individualist has the courage to wear a mask.
-- Mary McCarthy, _A Charmed Life_
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I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
-- Douglas Adams
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People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer
to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.
-- queenb**ch on slashdot
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Discussion can accomplish only so much, and then a wife and husband need
to cling to each other naked in the dark and be silent in the presence
of the essential mystery.
-- Garrison Keillor
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Minnesota produces tall sinewy women who can paddle a canoe, handle an
ax, dance the tango, manage money, write a paper on "Hamlet" and at the
end of the day do things that make a man faint from ecstasy.
-- Garrison Keillor
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The good Earth -- we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and
lazy.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
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[A] young woman with a "prim little narrow-minded smile."
-- Raymond Chandler
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For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to abandon our views
about them.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh (Viet Buddhist)
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I was not only picked on physically but intellectually -- people used to
kick copies of George Sand in my face.
-- Robin Williams
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Whatever our media -- magnetic, mimeographed or multi- -- the
marketplace will find a way to draw a pair of tits on it.
-- Ian Christe
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[H]ypocrisy is nothing but good manners, when dealing with the
pretensions of others
-- Gore Vidal
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A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you
know it.
- 'K' from _Men In Black_
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Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
- Anatole France
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The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And
although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what
I'm left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that
I can't quite remember.
- George Carlin
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I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people
who believe it.
- George Carlin
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The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is
being carried out.
- George Carlin
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Sometimes, when I'm told to use my own discretion, if no one is looking
I'll use someone else's. But I always put it back.
- George Carlin
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Always store beer in a dark place.
- Lazarus Long
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By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous
to man--man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition.
He has no enemy to help him.
- Lazarus Long
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Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.
- Lazarus Long
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Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet,
you can't win.
- Lazarus Long
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Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
- Lazarus Long
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Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why.
Then do it.
- Lazarus Long
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Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your
second shot perfect.
- Lazarus Long
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There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no
evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why
fret about it?
- Lazarus Long
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If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is an opinion.
- Lazarus Long
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It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another-but
which one? Differences are crucial.
- Lazarus Long
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A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer
should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around
she deserved.
- Lazarus Long
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Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's
beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from
drowning them at birth.
- Lazarus Long
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Most "scientists" are bottle washers and button sorters.
- Lazarus Long
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A "pacifist male" is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described
"pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the
wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.
- Lazarus Long
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Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman's breasts; it enhances
their charm by making them look lived in and happy.
- Lazarus Long
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A generation, which ignores history, has no past-and no future.
- Lazarus Long
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A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
- Lazarus Long
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What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!
- Lazarus Long
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Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
- Lazarus Long
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History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any
rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to
stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people
do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive
considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
- Lazarus Long
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It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
- Lazarus Long
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If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people.
- Lazarus Long
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Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may
offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without
hate--and quickly.
- Lazarus Long
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A motion to adjourn is always in order.
- Lazarus Long
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No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and,
in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their
sons: "Come back with your shield, or on it." Later on, this custom
declined. So did Rome.
- Lazarus Long
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Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of
nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing-with "obscenity" and "indecent
exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
- Lazarus Long
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Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
- Lazarus Long
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It is better to copulate than never.
- Lazarus Long
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All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young
children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or
folly which can-and must-be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime
function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other
basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any
foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless,
it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all
of them male) have tried endlessly-and no doubt will keep on trying.
- Lazarus Long
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All men are created unequal.
- Lazarus Long
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Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
- Lazarus Long
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A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.
- Lazarus Long
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There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk.
- Lazarus Long
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When the need arises-and it does-you must be able to shoot your own dog.
Don't farm it our-that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse.
- Lazarus Long
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Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites.
Moderation is for monks.
- Lazarus Long
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It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better
still to be a live lion. And usually easier.
- Lazarus Long
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One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
- Lazarus Long
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Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more
sanitary.
- Lazarus Long
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Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves.
Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
- Lazarus Long
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Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking
his self-interest gives you more leverage.
- Lazarus Long
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Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.
- Lazarus Long
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once.
- Lazarus Long
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Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. Circumstances
can force your hand. So think ahead!
- Lazarus Long
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Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
- Lazarus Long
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An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
- Lazarus Long
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[E]verything famous is Holy
- Cintra Wilson
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For ten years, Ceasar ruled with an iron hand, then with a wooden foot,
and finally with a piece of string.
- Spike Milligan,
_The Goon Show_, "The Histories of Pliny the Elder"
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Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
- Dan Quayle
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A computer cuts your work in half and gives you back the bloody stumps.
- Unknown
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Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
- Bumper Sticker
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The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary;
men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- Joseph Conrad
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The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes
To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose.
- Kenneth Hare
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The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.
- William Hazlitt,
"On the Clerical Character," Political Essays, (1819)
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It never ceases to amaze me at how many religions depend upon
circumsized penises.
- Dawn Henderson
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The Meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise
and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
- Lew Mammel, Jr.
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I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary success because it has such
a limited and narrow realm in which to focus its efforts. Namely, the
physical universe.
- Ken Jenkins
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Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send
peace, but a sword.
- Jesus, Matthew 10:34
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But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them,
bring hither, and slay them before me.
- Jesus, Luke 19:27
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Adultery is in your heart not only when you look with excessive sexual
zeal at a woman who is not your wife, but also if you look in the same
manner at your wife.
- Pope John Paul II
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My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in
the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under
English law at that time.
- Garrison Keillor
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You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it
turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
- Anne Lamott
~
Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have
the power.
- Joseph McCabe, "What Gods Cost Men"
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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H.L. Mencken
~
It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the
American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent
of God exactly and completely.
- H.L. Mencken
~
It is interesting that every time God gives direct orders to anyone, it
is always "Thou shalt kill."
- Newsweek magazine
~
Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.
- Salman Rushdie
~
MORAL CRUSADE: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are
cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are
particularly popular among those who are seeking power for their own
personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to
do with their mandates and religious professionals suffering from a
personal inability to communicate with their god. In military terms,
a diversionary tactic.
-John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter's Companion"
~
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false,
and by the rulers as useful.
- Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)
~
The man who says to me, 'Believe as I do, or God will damn you,'
will presently say, 'Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you.'
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
~
It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most
anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are
wearing the dresses.
- Flo Kennedy
~
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If
they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
- Helen Keller
~
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
- ?
~
The main doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the
enemies of God.
- Andrew White
~
Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong."
- ?
~
It's your god.
They're your rules.
*You* go to hell.
- ?
~
You Go Yahweh - and I'll go Mine!
- ?
~
Belief in heaven is impossible in the absence of a greedy desire for it.
- ?
~
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
- ?
~
We preach peace, forgiveness, tolerance and love. We practice vengeance,
persecution, hatred and domination. My personal beliefs are supported
and validated by my convictions.
Oh, and never forget
- Religion, paraphrased (unknown)
~
If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence
of Superman.
- Seen on the #Atheism IRC
~
A zealot's stones will break my bones, but gods will never hurt me.
- ?
~
The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages--
as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.
- Edward Abbey
~
Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require
unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.
Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the
gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.
- Edward Abbey
~
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey
~
A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously.
- Edward Abbey
~
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
- Howard Aiken
~
I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by
reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion
of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
- Petronius Arbiter (66 A.D.)
~
If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't
have a clear idea.
- David Belasco
~
He's acting alone. He's cut off from his chain of command. He's
exhibiting symptoms of pressure-induced psychosis, and he has a nuclear
weapon. So as a personal favor to me, would you lay off him?
- Bud Brigman, _The Abyss_
~
I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The
important question is whether they are in a position to do anything
about it.
- William S Burroughs
~
Any person who values a religion above the respect and kindness which
every human being deserves is unspeakably depraved and should have no
place in your life whatsoever - and the moreso if such perverts are
your own parents.
- Jack Carroll
~
You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But
not much progress can be made in that direction while we've still got a
majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and
using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide.
- Doug Graham
~
For best results: wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with
warm iron. For not so good results: drag behind car through puddles,
blow-dry on roofrack.
- HEET (A Korean clothes manufacturer - these are laundry
instructions found on one of their shirts)
~
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
~
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from
religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal
~
Literature is news that stays news.
- Ezra Pound
~
To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the
torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.
- Don Schrader
~
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
Let's start with typewriters.
- Solomon Short
~
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a
garage makes you an automobile.
- Billy Sunday
~
Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree,
it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
- George Santayana , Persons and Places:
The Middle Span,1945
~
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any
other reason but because they are not already common.
-- John Locke , An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690
~
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course,
powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Albert Einstein
~
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if
you don't.
- Pete Seeger
~
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War
IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
- Albert Einstein
~
Reality is that part of the imagination we all agree on.
- unknown
~
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the
conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent
for absorbing positive knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
~
We more frequently fail to face the right problem than fail to solve the
problem we face.
- unknown
~
Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers.
- unknown
~
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
- unknown
~
There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything
or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
- Alfred Korzybski
~
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten
your aim.
- George Santayana
~
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
damned things is ample.
- Rebecca West
~
A drama critic is a person who surprises a playwright by informing him
what he meant.
- Wilson Mizner
~
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and
original in your work.
- Flaubert
~
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry without a certain
unsoundness of mind.
- Thomas Macaulay
~
There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it. The other is
to like it rationally.
- Oscar Wilde
~
Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The
reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of
thirty-five.
- Joel Hildebrand
~
Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
- Kahlil Gibran
~
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your
facts is another.
- John Burroughs
~
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention
in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and
tequila.
- Mitch Ratcliffe
~
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
- Unknown
~
Fun is good.
- Dr. Seuss
~
They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction.
-- Janet Reno , US Attorney General, 02-27-98
~
Reality is for people who lack imagination
- unknown
~
A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.
- Louis Nizer
~
What if all the myths were true...
- Liu Kang
~
Freedom can be a frightening thing when you are not used to it.
- Zana Muhsen
~
You are the product of your own brainstorm.
- Rosemary Konner Steinbaum
~
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
- Don Marquis
~
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror,
murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci,
and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had
five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce?
The cuckoo clock.
-- Graham Greene
~
You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.
-- Neils Bohr to Albert Einstein
~
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than
religion.
- Goncourt
~
It is sometimes useful to pretend we are deceived, because when we show
a deceiving man that we see through his artifices, we only encourage him
to increase his deceptions.
- Madame de Sable
~
Honest and sincere acts mislead the wicked and cause them to lose their
path to their own goals, because mean-spirited people usually believe
that people never act without deceit.
- Madame de Sable
~
It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have
not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry.
- Albert Einstein
~
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high
degree of improbability.
- Fisher, Ronald Aylmer (1890 - 1962)
~
Writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
- Gauss, Karl Friedrich (1777-1855)
~
A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate
the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more
directly promotes the destruction of human life.
- Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
~
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For
the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he
was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other
desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
- Aldous Huxley
~
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
- Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)
~
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
- Minsky, Marvin Lee (1927 -)
~
To be sure, mathematics can be extended to any branch of knowledge,
including economics, provided the concepts are so clearly defined as to
permit accurate symbolic representation. That is only another way of
saying that in some branches of discourse it is desirable to know what
you are talking about.
- J. R. Newman
~
We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves
than by those which have occurred to others.
- Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
~
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of
skepticism.
- Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
~
Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number
of things which are beyond it.
- Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
~
In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase
of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president
used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.
- Hugo Rossi
~
Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the
physicist means to say.
- Bertrand Russell
~
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling
other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the
second is pleasant and highly paid.
- Bertrand Russell
~
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is
the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
- Alfred North Whitehead
~
Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of
simplicity.
- Zeeman, E Christopher (1925 - )
~
Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces
itself to this: `Great God, grant that twice two be not four'.
- Turgenev, Ivan Sergeievich (1818 - 1883)
~
Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes
them sinful.
- Luther, Martin (1483-1546)
~
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one
are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about `and'.
- Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
~
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would suffice."
- Mark Twain
~
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
- Wilson Mizner
~
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organization of hatreds.
- Henry Adams
~
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
- Mike Adams
~
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have
one.
- Stella Adler
~
Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.
- Diana Black
~
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr
~
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he
is trying to be funny.
- Guy Davenport
~
You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
- Doug Floyd
~
If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be
misinterpreted.
- H. R. Haldeman
~
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but
have only one course of action.
- Frank Herbert
~
I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the
plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of
Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst
~
I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man
carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the
man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the
pig.
- Alfred Hitchcock
~
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
- Kin Hubbard
~
Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time
raising money.
- Leon Lederman
~
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it
should end there.
- Claire Boothe Luce
~
No good deed goes unpunished.
- Claire Boothe Luce
~
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are
conservatives.
- John Stuart Mill
~
Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
- Erik Pepke
~
Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret,
especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.
- William Proxmire
~
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw
~
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to
fill the world with fools.
- Herbert Spencer
~
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
- H. G. Wells
~
Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.
- Oscar Wilde
~
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
~
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. . . the other eight
are unimportant.
- Herny Miller
~
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
- Anatole France
~
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
~
I think it would be a good idea.
-- Mahatma Ghandi, when asked what he thought of
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