%
% These cookies have been selected among those part of the fortune(6)
% package as part of various flavors of Linux distributions.
%
% TFM to R: fortune(6), strfile(4)
% e.g. fortune -m $X ; example values for X:
% 'Twain', 'Einstein', 'Sagan', 'Whitehead',
% 'PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE', 'screw.*bulb', 'ugly'
%
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
appears to me at present".

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.

I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
		-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
		-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to
mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom.
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
Evil is that which one believes of others.  It is a sin to believe evil
of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later;
for another thing they die earlier.
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
		-- H. L. Mencken
%
The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
		-- H.L. Mencken
%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
	Those who can -- do.
	Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:
	Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." -- H.L. Mencken
%
Re: Graphics:
	A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
	the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
	described with pictures.
		-- Alan Perlis
%
Question:  How many Intel/Microsoft executives does it take to screw in a
light bulb?


Answer:  None, they simply make darkness an industry standard.
%
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots.

So far, the Universe is winning.
		-- Rich Cook
%
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
		-- Isaac Asimov
%
Christian, n.:
	One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired
book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.  One who
follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent
with a life of sin.
%
Alliance, n.:
	In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
		AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
Aphorism, n.:
	A concise, clever statement.
Afterism, n.:
	A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
		-- James Alexander Thom
%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.
Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
%	-- Ayn Rand, novelist and philosopher
La société qui méprise l'excellence en plomberie sous prétexte que c'est une
activité basse, et tolère la médiocrité en philosophie sous prétexte que c'est
une activité élevée n'aura ni une bonne plomberie ni une bonne philosophie.
Ni ses tuyaux ni ses théories ne tiendront l'eau.
%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe?  Everything he
	  says is wrong.
GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
	  will be right.
		-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny" 
%
	 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
			  by Mark Twain

	For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
	Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
	Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
%
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
%
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote
peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them
have it.
                -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
On the subject of C program indentation:

	"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
	indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
		-- Blair P. Houghton
%
% (Hypocrisie unixienne)
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple
of more feet, just to be sure.
		-- Eric Allman
% (ditto)
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that
would also stop you from doing clever things.
		-- Doug Gwyn
%
Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep,
but at least you only have to climb it once.
%
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
Mr.  Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?'  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
		-- Charles Babbage
%
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.

2:  The Odd Prime --
	It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
3:  The True Prime --
	Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
	Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime
	in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91
	received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
	next most.  However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
	at all.

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
	And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
	Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
	"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
	"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
	"What the hell are you getting so upset about?  I thought you
didn't believe in God."
	"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the
God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God.  He's
not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."
		-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.  Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the
earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact temperature of Hell
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten brimstone means
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C.  We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
		-- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
%
God is Dead
		-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
		-- God
Nietzsche is God
		-- The Dead
%
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
 last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
 or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
 sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
 premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
 lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
 than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
 a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
 selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
 ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
 been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
 this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
 apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
 give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
 nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
 for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850
%
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the
Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if
a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes
me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
		-- John Donne, "No Man is an Iland"
%
"Ah, you know the type.  They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks,
'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one
big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the
only reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits
and losers."
		-- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
%
"I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means.  It means we
 get to keep all our old mistakes."
 -- Dennie van Tassel
%
"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
%
The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the
societies in which they occur.
		-- A.N. Whitehead
%
	It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the
case.  Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them.  Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
		-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action.  Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
		-- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
%
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.  The
question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them
is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the existence of
the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient.  (A
discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope
of this article.)
%
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All
software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all
responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features,
including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk
head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve
gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local
electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion,
hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic
radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components,
windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning
mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the
distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery
bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
%
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it.  Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
		-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
		-- Dijkstra
%
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to apply
Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
		-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
is an enemy.
		-- Albert Einstein
%
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.
		-- Albert Einstein
%
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
		-- Philip K. Dick
%
Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right
to use the editorial "we."
		-- Mark Twain
%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
	If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%
First Rule of History:
	History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.
%
The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.
		-- Lewis Carroll
%
We have not inherited the earth from our parents, we've borrowed it from
our children.
% vu attribué à Léopold Sédar Senghor:
% Nous n'héritons pas la Terre de nos parents. Nous l'empruntons à nos enfants.
%
To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances
may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence.
		-- Joseph Glanvill, 1661
%
The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than what we've got!
%
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
		-- F. Dostoyevski
%
The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that
for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good
requires intent.
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
Committee, n.:
	A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
		-- Fred Allen
%
Individualists unite!
%
Demand the establishment of the government in its rightful home at Disneyland.
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
	Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
	reject the proposal.
%
"Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under Communism, it's just the
opposite."
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Conservative, n.:
	One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
		-- Leo C. Rosten
%
I am an atheist, thank God!
%
Je suis athée, Dieu merci!
% attribué à Renan
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Quiconque est capable de se faire élir President ne doit sous aucun prétexte
être autorisé à exercer ce poste.
		-- Douglas Adams, "Le Guide du Routard de la Galaxie"
%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.
Only we can't control when the five year period will begin. -- Alan Perlis
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming,
is not worth knowing.		-- Alan Perlis
%
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
%
COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
%
We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer:
laziness, impatience, and hubris. -- LarryWall, Programming Perl (1st edition)
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
it's one of the best.
		-- Woody Allen
% traduction Faré:
"Le sexe sans amour est une expérience vaine, mais, de toutes les expériences
vaines, c'est l'une des meilleures." -- Woody Allen
%
"I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it." -- Monty Python
%
"I'm going to live forever, or die trying!" -- Spider Robinson
%% Yossarian said something similar
%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%
You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have,
for instance.
		-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
	From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
damage my videotapes?"
%
On-line, adj.:
	The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
%
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
		-- General Omar N. Bradley
%
Faith, n:
	That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue.
%
God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
%
Lie, n.:
	A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
	There's always one more bug.
%
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
%
Experience is the worst teacher.  It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
		-- Francois Fenelon
%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
% found in Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas
%
En raison de circonstances indépendantes de votre volonté,
vous voilà maître de votre destin et capitaine de votre âme.
%
Majority, n.:
	That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
Die, v.:
	To stop sinning suddenly.
		-- Elbert Hubbard
%
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer,
then you find there is nothing in it.
%
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen: redet man zu ihnen, so übersetzen
sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz etwas anderes.
[Les mathématiciens sont comme les Français: quoiqu'on leur dise,
ils le traduisent dans leur propre langue, et cela devient alors
quelque chose de complètement différent.] -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate
into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
		-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Every four seconds a woman has a baby.
Our problem is to find this woman and stop her.
%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
		-- Louise Beal
%
Brain, n.:
	The apparatus with which we think that we think.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Clairvoyant, n.:
	A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
		-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
		-- Mark Twain
%
"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work."
		-- Gallagher
%
Sex is not the answer.  Sex is the question.  "Yes" is the answer.
		-- Swami X
%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
		-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Always remember that you are unique.  Just like everyone else.
% To which "Life of Brian" replies:
- We're all different.
- I'm not!
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
undreamed of by its author.
		-- S. C. Johnson
%
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
%
Absent, adj.:
    Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.
%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
		-- Henrik Ibsen
%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
		-- Weisert
%
"The Army is a place where you get up early in the morning to be yelled
at by people with short haircuts and tiny brains."
		-- Dave Barry
%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.  It just stops you
from enjoying it.
%
You worry too much about your job.  Stop it.  You're not paid enough to worry.
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
the real reason.
%
...so this guy walks into a bar.
"The usual, Mr. Descartes?" the barman asked.
"I think not," Rene replied, and promptly disappeared.
%
     There are two kinds of people, those who do the work
and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group;
there is less competition there
		-- Indira Gandhi.
%
"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
%
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
%
"I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them."	-- Isaac Asimov
%
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You'll learn a lot today.
%
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
		-- Matt Cartmill
%
"Adolescent, j'aspirais à la gloire immortelle, j'étais avide de certitude
factuelle, et j'avais soif d'une vision donnant du sens à la vie humaine
-- alors je suis devenu scientifique. C'est comme de devenir archévêque
pour pouvoir rencontrer des filles." -- Matt Cartmill
%
Don't tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.
		-- James J. Ling
%
Paralysis through analysis.
%
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
		-- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%
"Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance."
		-- Cal Keegan
% Who's Keegan? See instead Hanlon's razor.
%
The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work.
		-- Herbert V. Prochnow
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Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls
and looks like work.	-- T. A. Edison
%
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.  They seem
more afraid of life than death.
		-- James F. Byrnes
%
Reporter: Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
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Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
		-- Gandhi
%
Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality.
%
Reality must take precedence over public relations,
for Mother Nature cannot be fooled.
		-- R.P. Feynman
%
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
		-- Thomas Alva Edison
%
Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics,
Benchmarks, and Delivery dates.
%
Death is only a state of mind.

Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
%
The superior man understands what is right;
the inferior man understands what will sell.
		-- Confucius
%
In the beginning there was nothing.  And the Lord said "Let There Be Light!"
And still there was nothing, but at least now you could see it.
%
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
		-- Harlan Ellison
%
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the
Wright brothers.  But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
		-- Carl Sagan
%
drug, n:
	A substance that, injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper.
%
Seems like this farmer purchased an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans
to turn it into a thriving enterprise.  The fields are grown over with weeds,
the farmhouse is falling apart, and the fences are collapsing all around.
During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to bless the man's
work, praying, "May you and God work together to make this the farm of your
dreams!"
	A few months later, the preacher stops by again to call on the farmer.
Lo and behold, it's like a completely different place -- the farm house is
completely rebuilt and in excellent condition, there is plenty of cattle and
other livestock happily munching on feed in well-fenced pens, and the fields
are filled with crops planted in neat rows.  "Amazing!" the preacher says.
"Look what God and you have accomplished together!"
	"Yes, reverend," replies the farmer, "but remember what the farm was
like when God was working it alone!"
%
Be careful what you set your heart on -- for it will surely be yours.
	-- James Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name"
%
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
	-- Groucho Marx
%
%Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice... moderation in the pursuit
%of justice is no virtue.
%	-- Barry Goldwater
% Karl Hess explicitly denied writing it.
% Tom Paine said it better. See collected.
%
What we Are is God's gift to us.
What we Become is our gift to God.
%
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Robert Heinlein
%
Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
	-- Frank Tyger
%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
	-- Edmund Burke
%
If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use?
Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?
	-- Seymour Cray
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No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has
a better opinion of him than he deserves.	-- Edgar Watson Howe
%
No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next.
		-- Edgar Watson Howe
%
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him.
		-- Edgar Waston Howe
%
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
		-- Edgar Watson Howe
%
"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
		-- Claude Shouse (shouse@macomw.ARPA)

"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
		-- Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
%
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him
a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in alltimes and situations. They presented him the words:
	"And this, too, shall pass away."
                -- Abraham Lincoln
%