“In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.” Terry Pratchett
“Tis with our judgements as our watches: None go just alike, yet each believes his own.”
Alexander Pope (1688…1744)
“Breasts are like toy trains. They were intended for children but grown men usually end up playing with them.”
Maybe he was just a gifted nut who was there as a flock of circumstances flew by
Web pages are like babies __ creation involves a level of enthusiasm that does not necessarily carry over into maintenance." __Joe Chew
“By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second,by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
Confucius
Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation. Edward R. Murrow
You can catch more flies with a flyswatter than with honey and/or vinegar
“Chance favors the prepared mind,” said Michael
Williams, a scientist and vice president at Abbott.
“We had a slew of compounds that we knew interacted
(with the nicotine receptors). We then looked through
them for some that had analgesic potential.”
Blooms the laurel which belongs
To the valiant chief who fights;
I see the wreath, I hear the songs
Lauding the Eternal Rights,
Victors over daily wrongs:
Awful victors, they misguide
Whom they will destroy,
And their coming triumph hide
In our downfall, or our joy:
Speak it firmly, – these are gods,
All are ghosts beside.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The greater the diameter of your knowledge,
the greater the circumference of your ignorance…”
Good is the enemy of Excellent. Talent is not necessary for Excellence.
Persistence is necessary for Excellence. And Persistence is a Decision.
SUPPORT BACTERIA_it’s the only culture some people have.
“To believe in the possibility of liberation,” says Tufts University’s Lee Edelman, “is to believe there is a trapped identity struggling to get out. But it’s not a matter of liberating something that is repressed; it’s a matter of inventing ways of becoming something that has not been. It’s less a matter, in that sense, of coming out than of coming into__and one can’t know in advance what that will be.”
“She didn’t have much upstairs, but Oh what a staircase!” _ Clive James
“I could be living the best and happiest of all lives if only I were not a fool.” - The sorrowful youth Werther, in The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“God, why do Americans dress so bad? Do they want to look unattractive so they won’t get raped, or what? When did it start?” _Andy Warhol
The tongue is the enemy of the neck _ Arab Proverb
The great orthographical contest has long subsisted between etymology and pronunciation. It has been demanded, on one hand, that men should write as they speak; but, as it has been shown that this conformity never was attained in any language, and that it is not more easy to persuade men to agree exactly in speaking than in writing, it may be asked, with equal propriety, why men do not rather speak as they write.
__ Samuel Johnson, “The Plan of an English Dictionary” (1747).
‘You sound like a man who can handle himself in bed. And often does.’ Duckman
“The difference between a successful person and others
is not the lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge,
but rather a lack of will.”
_Vince Lombardi
“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” __ Max Weinreich
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
__ John Stuart Mill
“Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup.”
_ Dogbert
Laugh while you can, monkey boy !
Herbert Spencer: “The ultimate result of shielding men
from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
“We were once so close to heaven, Peter came out and gave us medals declaring us the nicest of the damned.”
-They Might Be Giants
“Yes, well, of course, that’s just the sort of blinkered philistine pig ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non_creative garbage.”
The subatomic world, where particles are not solid objects
so much as smears of probability, may seem counterintuitive, even illogical.
Tarlé concludes. “Primordial antimatter is not going to be seen,”
he predicts. “It’s like looking for monkeys on the moon.”
“One of the joys of writing is that people appear to be getting a lot more out of my books than I’m actually putting into them” — Kinky FriedmanBad ideas never die; they become panel discussions
Enjoy your job, work within the law, make lots of money : Choose any two.
“It’s not burnt. It’s Cajun!” - Christopher A. Evans
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity;
A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity
Please don’t feed or tease the kooks.
Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Cruising down the Information Super Highway… with my seat belt hanging out the door making sparks on the road.
“What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense
and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense
and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of
objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence
but downplays their practical relevance.”
Alan Sokal, in his now notorious Lingua Franca article
“One never knows, do one?” Fats Waller–?
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
“Everything is true. . . . Everything anybody has ever thought.”
__Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Bill: “Socrates: ‘The only true wisdom consists in knowing
that you know nothing.’”
Ted: “That’s us, Dude!”
Bill: “Oh yeah.”__
“Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”
… it’s so big they found another bug in the Pentium chip trying to calculate it
When you’re arguing with a fool, make sure he isn’t doing the same thing.
“There is no profit if your game is the deal,” acknowledges
Robert J. Thomas, the president of Nissan’s marketing
activities in the U.S. “There is plenty of profit if your game is the brand.”
There is no task so obnoxious that it will not be completed
enthusiastically, provided it is being used as a means to
procrastinate on doing something even worse.
Jonathan P. Bernick
“For most military people, looking at civil affairs is like
pigs looking at a wristwatch,” Col. Hess says. They “kind
of like it, are intrigued by it, but they don’t really know what it does.”
Diplomacy is the art of saying “nice doggy” while you search for a rock.
Mandarin Rejection Notice:
We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If
we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for
us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is
unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see
its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your
divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to
overlook our short sight and timidity.
Motto of the Bomb Squad:
If you see us running, you better catch up.
