Quotes
A collections of musings that struck me…
Quotation confesses inferiority.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Letters and Social Aims”, 1875.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
– Mark Twain
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.
- Stephen Hawking
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.
You should not confuse your career with your life.
- Dave Barry
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
– Albert Einstein
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
– Italian proverb
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.
- Hunter S. Thompson
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
- Isaac Asimov
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
– Mark Twain
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
– Mark Twain
I’d pay five or six hundred dollars [a ticket] if I could bring Jerry back.
– Kelli Barber
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…”
- Isaac Asimov
Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all its students.
- some bumper sticker
Beware the fury of a patient man.
- John Dryden
A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
- Dave Barry
Faliure is just a good excuse to start again more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
Quantum Mechanics – the dreams stuff is made of.
- ???
In my day, we didn’t have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian was chasing you with an axe, you just had to hope you could outrun him.
- Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
- Dave Barry
Before you criticize a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way when u criticize him, you’re a mile away , and you have his shoes.
- Jack Handy
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
But what… is it good for?
- Engineering at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.
- Hunter S. Thompson
The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would want to pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?
- David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920’s.
The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.
- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing a reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
- Dave Barry
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.
- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”
A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft chewy cookies like you make.
- Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.
“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
I’m a peripheral visionary.
- Steven Wright
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
- Lord Kelvin, president Royal Society, 1895.
If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiemnt. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.
- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesive for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
So we went to Atari and said, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said ‘Hey we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”
- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get atari and HP interested In his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has
not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word
would be “meetings.”
- Dave Barry
“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.
Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? Your crazy.
- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
- Charles H. Duell
“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction”.
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”.
- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way, as we should see if we weren’t always so wrapped in ourselves.
- Albert Camus, The Plague
A bunch of hippy acid-heads invented the personal computer. I love this revenge of the hippies stuff.
- William Gibson
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
Man is still the fastest and most efficient computer that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor.
- Wernher Von Brown
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.
- Miles Davis
If you take a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bit you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.
- Mark Twain
Remember that a kick in the ass is a step forward.
- Anonymous
The bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
- Oscar Wilde
Not before the last tree has been cut, Not before the last river has been poisoned, We will discover that money cannot be eaten.
- Probably an old Indian.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on the stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
- Mark Twain
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”
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
- George Carlin
Bill Gates is only a white persian cat and a monocle away from being the villain in a James Bond movie.
- Dennis Miller
Fresh potatoes do not have roots, branches, or dense, leafy undergrowth.
- Bachelor’s Guide to Food.
Hermits have no peer pressure.
- Steven Wright.
I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour…
- F. H. Wales (1936)
There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.
- Dave Barry
THE BEER PRAYER
Our lager, Which art in barrels, Hallowed be thy drink,
Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk), At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages, As we forgive those who spill against us,
and lead us not to incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers, (and friday staff meetings!!!)
For thine is the beer, The bitter and the lager, Forever and ever,
…
Barmen.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
- ???
Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
- Ambrose Pierce
Nothing recedes like success
- Walter Winchell
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
- ???
I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
- La Rouchefoucauld
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
- G. B. Shaw
Your conscience never stops you rom doing anything. It just stops you from enjoying it.
- Anonymous
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
- W. C. Fields
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
- Anonymous
Over the years, I’ve developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now I can remember things that *have* happened before…
- Anonymous
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
- F. P. Jones
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
- Anonymous
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
- Alfred Jarry
Some don’t prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
- Alfred Jarry
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
- General Omar N. Bradley
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
- H. H. Munroe
You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
- Steven Wright
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
- Ransom K. Fern
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
Get your facts first – then you can distort them as much as you like.
- Mark Twain
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making
exciting discoveries.
- A. A. Milne
If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t you’re right.
- Henry Ford
Do, or do not. There is no “try”.
- Yoda
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But I looked around and thought, “Hey, this isn’t even my bed!” And that made me happy, ’cause it’s been a while.
- Elka Olsen
He who lives by the sword, should go out and get himself a really nice sword.
- Lev L. Spiro
Where there’s smoke there’s fire, but where there’s a vague fishy odor, it could be a number of things.
- J.P. Styskal
You couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
- Edward Flaherty
Sleep, riches & health, to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted.
- Jean Paul Richter
If you lose your job, your marriage and your mind all in one week, try to lose your mind first, because then the other stuff won’t matter that much.
- Jack Handy