% % This cookie jar contains stuff gathered mostly from the Internet: % articles, web pages, usenet postings, e-mail messages, irc chats, etc. % But also a few from books or people I know. % %%% Taoful and untaoful % Souvent un sot croira profonde une eau qui n'est que trouble. % d'après une citation d'origine inconnue transmise par Greg Bodylski % La vie n'est pas un restaurant mais un buffet. Levez-vous pour vous servir. Life is not a restaurant but a buffet. Stand up to serve yourself. -- Dominique Glocheux % God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. % (The Serenity Prayer is generally thought to have been written by Reinhold Niebuhr) % Luck occurs when preparedness meets opportunity. % La chance est la rencontre de l'opportunité et de la préparation. % Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend. -- Tagore % The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice. -- Mahatma Gandhi % That man who dares to waste one hour of time, has not discovered the value of life. -- Charles Darwin % The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. -- Mark Twain % Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. -- Benjamin Franklin % im always happy // even when im sad // im happy to be sad // it doesnt happen often // so its like gift for me // and gift make me happy -- q % Every task involves constraint, Solve the thing without complaint; There are magic links and chains Forged to loose our rigid brains. Structures, strictures, though they bind, Strangely liberate the mind. % James Falen, as quoted in dughof's "Le ton beau de Marot", p. 272 % Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. -- Eliel Saarinen % Friedrich Hayek was the first object-oriented programmer. -- Bill Tulloh % You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life." % All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible. % quoted by Jakes on #linpeople % He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. -- John McCarthy, in his webpage on Progress and Sustainability % http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ % Your denial of the importance of objectivity amounts to announcing your intention to lie to us. No-one should believe anything you say. % -- John McCarthy http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/rationality-q-1.html % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy You say you couldn't live if you thought the world had no purpose. You're saying that you can't form purposes of your own -- that you need someone to tell you what to do. The average child has more gumption than that. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy You say the only alternative to nuclear war is world government. There is only one possibility worse than nuclear war for the survival of modern civilization, and that is world government. Civilization might recover from the damage of a nuclear war, but judging by past static empires in Egypt and China, it might never recover from world government, there being no chance of external intervention. As it is, present governments are only prevented from becoming dominated by crazy ideas that will suppress all opposition by the existence of other governments. The only way a people can be sure that their government is substandard is that it does worse than those of other countries. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy There is only one thing more harmful to society than an elected official forgetting the promises he made in order to get elected; that's when he doesn't forget them. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy The politicians have a most touching faith in technology -- that it can make up for any dumb thing the politicians decide to do. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy The last ten percent of any reform is the most difficult to achieve. Moreover, it is often harmful. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Soccer riots kill at most tens. Intellectuals' ideological riots sometimes kill millions.-- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Suicidal terrorists may have short shelf lives. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy The difference between a contemporary liberal and a socialist is that to a liberal the most beautiful word in the English language is 'forbidden', whereas to a socialist the most beautiful word is 'compulsory'. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Personal dishonesty is not needed to produce a dishonest business plan or research proposal. Wishful thinking suffices. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Slogans rarely convince the unconvinced. However, they do rally the troops already on your side. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Oh, he's sincere all right. The question is: what is he sincere about? -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Once a person has killed other people on behalf of an ideology, he becomes rather devoted to it. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Language is froth on the surface of thought. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Malthus was right. It's hard to see how the solar system could support much more than 10^28 people or the universe more than 10^50. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy My hobby of not attending meetings about recycling saves more energy than your hobby of recycling. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy If you want to do good, work on the technology, not on getting power. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to get out. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy It is deplorable that many people think that the best way to improve the world is to forbid something. However, they're morally more advanced than the people who think the best way to improve the world is to kill somebody. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy It's just a pissing contest, but unfortunately the contestants never seem to run out of piss. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy It's possible to program a computer in English. It's also possible to make an airplane controlled by reins and spurs. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy He who says he will die for a cause will probably lie for it and may kill for it. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Honor among thieves is the ancestor of all honor. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy If everyone were to live for others all the time, life would be like a procession of ants following each other around in a circle. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy If it doesn't work right, we can always try something else. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy He has the first half of the Golden Rule down pat: Do unto others. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Here's a way to tell scientific intelligence from legal intelligence. Both may start from the idea that something cannot be done and think up arguments to explain why. However, it is possible that the scientist may discover a flaw in the argument that leads him to change his mind and discover a way to do it. He will be pleased. The legal thinker will merely try to patch the flaw in the argument, because once he has chosen a side, all his intelligence is devoted to finding arguments for that side. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Foolishness is rarely a matter of lack of intelligence or even lack of information. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Committing genocide on behalf of an institution generates greater loyalty to it than merely getting people fired from their jobs on its behalf. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Comparing oneself with Galileo or Einstein is certainly good for the ego -- provided one refrains from going into too much detail. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy Amateur bureaucrats are often even worse than professional bureaucrats. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy 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 % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy An excessive knowledge of Marxism is a sign of a misspent youth. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy An extreme optimist is a man who believes that humanity will probably survive even if it doesn't take his advice. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy As Marx should have said, the principle of communism is From each according to what he can't get out of doing. To each according to whom he knows. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture. -- John McCarthy % % From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy As we have recently seen, the function of the anti-trust laws is to protect the poor little fellow with a mere $5 billion from being bullied by the big guy with $50 billion. -- John McCarthy % % From http://commonsensewonder.com/quotes.htm If six billion people have both more food and more forest than their three billion parents did; if the prices of copper, wheat and natural gas are going down, not up; if there are 20 times more carcinogens in three cups of organic coffee than in daily dietary exposure to the worst pesticide both before and after the DDT ban; if renewable resources such as whales are more easily exhausted than non-renewables such as coal; if lower infant mortality leads to falling populations, not rising ones, then perhaps we need to think differently about what sustainability means. Perhaps the most sustainable thing we can do is develop new technology, increase trade and spread affluence. -- Matt Ridley % The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it. -- P.J. O'Rourke % % From http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws! -- Alan Kay, 1971 % Ceci n'est pas une thèse -- c'est seulement une impression d'une thèse. -- René Magritte % Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. -- G.K. Chesterton % Avoir l'esprit ouvert, en soi, n'est rien. L'esprit ne sert d'être ouvert, comme la bouche, que pour être refermé sur quelque chose de substantiel. -- G.K. Chesterton % To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. -- G.K. Chesterton % Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. -- Albert Einstein % I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives. -- Tolstoy % Oint le vilain, il te poindra. Point le vilain, il te oindra. -- (Sagesse du Moyen-Âge) % Brevity is the soul of wit. -- Shakespeare % First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -- Gandhi % % The same as above in an older but less concise quote: Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self-evident. -- Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th century German philosopher % L'exagération de la piété filiale n'est pas le juste milieu. -- Mo-Tse % Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. -- Thomas Paine % Lorsqu'on veut accomplir quelque belle action, il faut la faire et oublier les peines qu'elle peut entrainer. -- Mo-Tse % Nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu (Nothing in intellect unless first in the senses) % When words are unfit, speech is unadapted and actions are unsuccessful -- Confucius % A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace. -- Confucius % Factum, non dictum, amicus quaerit % Sapience n'entre poinct en âme malivole, et science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme. -- Maistre Alcofrybas Nasier % Chuangtse and Hueitse had strolled onto the bridge over the Hao, when the former observed, ``See how the small fish are darting about! That is the happiness of the fish.'' ``You are not a fish yourself,'' said Hueitse. ``How can you know the happiness of the fish?'' ``And you not being I,'' retorted Chuangtse, ``how can you know that I do not know?'' -- Chuangtse, circa 300 B.C. % Never try not to think, it won't work. -- Tril % The highest goal of computer science is to automate that which can be automated. -- Derek L. VerLee % "I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers % from http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html % information we gather and create overflows our means of managing it our ppl r only happenstancely synergistic % There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. -- Morpheus, in "The Matrix" % C'est toute l'histoire de ma vie. Sauf que contrairement au héros du film, % moi, je connais la Voie au lieu que de la suivre... % Une carte n'est pas le territoire. -- Alfred Korzybski % First Person: "Why are you snapping your fingers?" Second Person: "To keep the tigers away." First Person: "But, there are no tigers in this area!" Second Person: "You see: it's working." % L'imitation est la forme la plus sincère de la flatterie. % %%% Complexity % Complexity is the hallmark of stupidity -- Erik Naggum % Ce qui se conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément. -- Boileau % Keep things as simple as you can, but no simpler. -- Albert Einstein s/things/explanation/ ; s/A.*Einstein/Occam/ % Everything is interesting if you go into it *deeply* enough. -- Richard Feynman % If the human mind were simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it. -- Pat Bahn % The reason truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to make sense. % washort: who says? % Fare: i forget. % since this makes sense, it is more fictive than true, % according to itself. % no, it's just that fiction has a need for suspension of disbelief % truth doesn't % %%% Tao of Computing % My understanding of macros is expanding -- Matthias Felleisen wrt the PLT Scheme module system % Meta is Better. Anything you can do, I can do Meta. -- Patrick Logan % http://radio.weblogs.com/0100812/2002/07/16.html#a535 % From a programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request. -- P. Williams % If you could make a programming language where programmers could write in english, you'd find that most people can't write english. -- "Masoud Pirnazar" on comp.lang.lisp 2001-10-12 % Toute technique est mise au point, utilisée, importante, obsolète, normalisée puis comprise. % Every technique is first developed, then used, important, obsolete, normalized, and finally understood. % Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send. -- Jon Postel % If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. -- Dijkstra % Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation: I have preferences. You have biases. He/She has prejudices. % A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. -- Joseph Campbell % Backwards compatible -- If it's not backwards it's not compatible -- Greg Newton % %"Actually a person does not _really_ understand something until teaching %it to a _computer_, i.e. expressing it as an algorithm." D.E. Knuth. % Premature optimization is the root of all evil. -- D.E. Knuth % ``"Structured Programming with go to Statements,'' % Computing Surveys, Vol. 6, No. 4, December, 1974, page 268. % http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ezgzIz-4XD8:www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/editorial-10.html+premature+optimization+knuth&hl=en % Attributed to C.A.R. Hoare -- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization % A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant. -- Alan Perlis % Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them. -- Alan Perlis % You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. -- Alan Perlis % Memory is like an orgasm... it's better when you dont have to fake it. -- Seymour Cray % Luser, n.: Human-like creature that doesn't dare to use elevator, because of its belief that only horrible geeks can master arcane and obscure art of using control panel. % Better, faster, cheaper - pick any two. % If a trainstation is where the trains stop, what is then a workstation... -- Lars Lundgren % Plug and Pray! % Speed has always been important otherwise one wouldn't need the computer. --Seymour Cray % Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. -- E. W. Dijkstra % Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. -- Rich Kulawiec % Les anciens informaticiens français disaient sentencieusement que l'informatique c'est 20 % de hardware et de software et 80 % de footware dans les harmwares. -- FdS % Un hacker fait par amour de l'art ce que d'autres ne peuvent faire, même pour de l'argent. % The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen. -- Alan Schmitt % If it's not worth doing right, it's not worth doing. -- Scott McKay % The difference between a claim and a real thing is about 5 million lines of code. -- Rainer Joswig % "Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration. Possibly this trend results from a mistaken belief that using a somewhat mysterious device confers an aura of power on the user." -- Niklaus Wirth % Tu as lu les docs. Tu es devenu un informaticien. Que tu le veuilles ou non. Lire la doc, c'est le Premier et Unique Commandement de l'informaticien. -- TP in: Guide du linuxien pervers - "L'évangile selon St Thomas" % "Floating point numbers are like sandpiles; every time you move one you lose a little sand and pick up a little dirt" -- Vic Vissotsky % "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching" -- Terje Mathisen, well-known programming optimization guru % %%% LISP % Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious." Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs." -- Nikodemus Siivola % % See jargon toolsmith I'd rather write programs that write programs than write programs -- Dick Sites % We could have an obfuscated-scheme contest, but if call/cc and macros are allowed, that would be like using nuclear bombs to hunt bunnyrabbits... -- Ray Dillinger % The greatest danger of Lisp is that it may spoil you. Once you've used Lisp for a while, you become so sensitive to the fit between language and application that you won't be able to go back to another language without always feeling that it doesn't give you quite the flexibility you need. -- Paul Graham, "On Lisp", Chapter 1 % [In Lisp, as compared to other languages] You can get fast programs, but you have to work for them. In this respect, using Lisp is like living in a rich country instead of a poor one: it may seem unfortunate that one has to work so as to stay thin, but surely this is better than working to stay alive, and being thin as a matter of course. -- Paul Graham, "On Lisp", p.285 % "Lisp is a programmable programming language." -- John Foderaro % If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran. If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases. -- Guy L. Steele Jr. % Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. % Data and procedures and the values they amass, Higher-order functions to combine and mix and match, Objects with their local state, the messages they pass, A property, a package, the control point for a catch - In the Lambda Order they are all first-class. One Thing to name them all, One Thing to define them, One Thing to place them in environments and bind them, In the Lambda Order they are all first-class. -- from the printed copy of MIT AI Memo 848b (aka R4RS), Guy Louis Steele, with apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien. % A long time ago, someone in the Lisp industry told me it was poor form quote people; it suggests that they lack value. But I don't want to get bound up into that argument, so let's just achieve closure by agreeing that the point is that you can feel free to point people to my earlier pointer, which works as a reference for certain reference works that are particularly on point in their pointers about pointer references. Did you copy all that? -- Kent M Pitman Take my advice, I for one have always believed in share and share alike. I'm constant on that. If I were to modify my argument, however slightly, those that depend on me (and I get calls all the time, and I return most of them), might accuse me of corruption. I may have no class, but at least my values haven't changed. -- Jrm % (define (cthulhu_fhthagn) ; Iver Odin Kvello, iverk@hfstud.uio.no (call/cthulhu (lambda (destroy) ; Lambda, the Ultimate Horror (if (stars-are-right? (now)) (destroy 'everything) (cthulhu_fhtagn))))) % Lambda calculus: Casual call dumb, A bad CACM lull us, Ada club all scum. Abacus clad mull, Lab calculus mad. A Dacca bull slum? Bald caucus mall Balm ad calculus; Calamus call bud. MBA calculus lad, A clad callus bum, CACM laud as bull. UCLA all bad scum: A scald alum club, A baud clam scull. Lambda calculus -- Call us a mad club. - - - Enjoy! 'james % (James Crippen) % %%% Bad Languages % Language often obscures truth. More than is ordinarily realized, our eyes are blinded to the facts [...] by tricks of the tongue. When one uses the simple monosyllable "France" one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When to avoid awkward repetition we use a personal pronoun in referring to a country -- when for example we say "France sent her troops to conquer Tunis" -- we impute not only unity but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women who are the true actors. How different it would be if we had no such word as "France," and had to say instead -- thirty-eight million men, women and children of very diversified interests and beliefs, inhabiting 218,000 square miles of territory! Then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such way as this: "A few of these thirty-eight million persons sent thirty thousand others to conquer Tunis." This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who are the "few"? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And why did these obey? -- Parker T. Moon % http://fare.livejournal.com/125541.html % % These are from http://www.cs.rice.edu/~matthias/quotes.html The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony number 9. -- Erwin Dieterich % Being really good at C++ is like being really good at using rocks to sharpen sticks. -- Thant Tessman % When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb. -- Steve Hoflich on comp.lang.c++ % If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor, and when was the last time you needed one? -- Tom Cargil, C++ Journal. % I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I didn't have C++ in mind. -- Alan Kay, OOPSLA '97 % Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet -- Alan Kay % [Lisp is the] greatest single programming language ever designed. -- Alan Kay % If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. -- Robert Sewell % %%% UNIX % Some people, when confronted with a Unix problem, think "I know, I'll use sed." Now they have two problems. -- Jamie Zawinski % The problem with Unix ever becoming a widely popular desktop operating system is referred to as the 'guru in the box' problem. To get and keep Unix running smoothly you need a captive guru on site and there just aren't enough gurus to put in the shipping boxes. -- Brian Kernighan % %%% MICROS~1 losedoze % Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. -- Ferenc Mantfeld % "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!" -- Bill Gates, 1981 "Windows 95 requires at least 8 MB RAM." -- Bill Gates, 1996 "Nobody will ever need Windows 95." -- logical conclusion % Prendre en charge MS-Windows c'est un peu comme acheter un petit animal de compagnie. Le chien coûte seulement 500 francs, mais il faut ensuite en dépenser 2500 pour nettoyer le tapis. -- Marc Dodge "Open Computing", Décembre 1994 % Le client : - Allô ? J'emploie MS-Windows ! Support technique : - Oui ? - Mais cela ne fonctionne pas. - Vous l'avez déjà dit. % Windows 95 has a new feature. There is now a single function key which, when pressed, will produce a general protection fault. In previous versions of Windows, in order to produce a GPF, you had to run an application. % % Sorklin (Verf@Hotmail.Com) http://www.i2.i-2000.com/~sorklin % on Slashdot 99-11-11 14:45 FWT ; I added "or unstated". *EULA: By reading or responding to this message you agree that all my stated or unstated opinions are correct.* "EULA" -- patent pending. % %% This one from /. a modified one in ./fare % NOTE: By reading this post, you have agreed to run around the room which you % are currently in, flapping your arms, and squawking like a chicken. % The main difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying. - Peter da Silva % %%% Free Software % A word for the epoch of free software and universal publishing: voluntocracy n 1. governance by those who do the work. 2. the volunteers who do the work. -- Aubrey Jaffer, http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/ % Does anybody else find irony in the fact that Bill Gates says he's trying to write a stable OS, and Linus claims he's trying to take over the world? % Quand je donne un objet, je n'en dispose plus. Mais quand je donne une information, j'en dispose toujours. % Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again. -- Bruce Schneier % http://cryptome.org/futile-cp.htm % If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. --Thomas Jefferson % On apprend au parent à ne pas s'accrocher à son enfant adulte, à le laisser vivre sa vie. Quel livre montrera au développeur de logiciel à laisser sa création évoluer grâce aux autres ? -- B. Lang % % From http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/quotes.html The advantages ... [of not having patents] in the machine industry generally, lie less in the free use of developments themselves, than in the free scope for engineers in general. With great complicated machinery, individual, perhaps not very essential, parts can be patented, thus preventing a complete and perhaps much more valuable construction and forcing better engineers to an exacting study of all such little patents. -- Bureau der Kaufmannischen Gesellschaft Zurich, 1886. % Watt refused applications for licenses to make engines under his patent: he discouraged experiments by Murdoch with locomotive models; he was hostile to the use of steam at high pressure; and the authority he wielded was such as to clog engineering enterprise for more than a generation. If his monopoly had been allowed to expire in 1783 England might have had railways earlier. If a similar privilege had been extended to Arkwright - if, indeed, his wide patents had not been annulled in 1781-5 - it is at least possible that a dead hand might have rested on the cotton industry also, and that forces tending to raise the standard of life of the poor would have been stifled. -- Ashton T.S., An Economic History of England: The 18th Century. % In the electronics industry, patents are of no value whatsoever in spurring research and development. -- vice-president of Intel Corporation, Business Week, 11 May 1981. % Property in ideas is an insoluble contradiction. [He who complains of "theft" of his idea] complains that something has been stolen which he still possesses, and he wants back something which, if given to him a thousand times, would add nothing to his possession. -- H. Rentzsch, Geistiges Eigenthum, 1866. % If it isn't source, it isn't software. -- NASA % If only the whole world thought this way but welcome to real life. You know, ever since I started the GNU project, 15 years ago, people have been telling me to accept "real life"; to accept the way the world is, instead of trying to change it. Well, I never listened to them, and that's why we now have a free operating system. Because I did not accept the way the world WAS as the only "real life" forever. I guess that's enough response. -- Richard Stallman, on linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu % %%% Classical Liberalism % "Exploitation is a word often used but rarely defined. In its most literal meaning -- I 'exploit' you if I in some way benefit from your existence -- it is the reason human society exists. We all benefit from one another's existence. We all exploit each other." -- D. Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom % "How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?" A- "None, the market will take care of it." B- "Every one of them and non-libs too, because we all *are* the market." C- "*I*'ll do it, for a dollar." % as read on http://libertariannation.org/a/f22l3.html % Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking. -- William E. Simon % http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/archives/001453.php % To be an anarchist only means that you believe that aggression is not justified, and that states necessarily employ aggression. And, therefore, that states, and the aggression they necessarily employ, are unjustified. It's quite simple, really. It's an ethical view, so no surprise it confuses utilitarians. --- N. Stephan Kinsella % "Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist." -- William Graham Sumner (1840-1910). % Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases : If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan (1986) % The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." -- Ronald Reagan. % Que ce soit une grosse entreprise ou un magasin de quartier, les impôts font partie des coûts de fonctionnement des entreprises, et doivent être répercutés sur les prix des produits: ce qui signifie que c'est toujours nous, les consommateurs, qui payons ces impôts. L'État ne peut taxer les entreprises (encore moins les profits !), petites ou grandes, il ne peut taxer que les gens. Quand il dit qu'il va « faire payer les entreprises », ce qu'il fait en réalité : c'est qu'il contraint les entreprises à l'aider à collecter les impôts ». -- Ronald Reagan - Californie, le 31 juillet 1978 % - "If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" - "If you're so rich, how come you're not smart?" -- narrated by Steven E. Landsburg, "The Armchair Economist" % A famous professor of finance once lectured a group of successful investors on how markets behave. His talk painted a profound vision of how the world works but offered little in the way of practical investment advice. The audience, which had come seeking not wisdom but wealth, grew restless. When the professor invited questions, the first was overtly hostile and entirely predictable: "If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" The professor (who was in fact the richest man in the room, but that's another story) responded, "If you're so rich, how come you're not smart?" -- narrated by Steven E. Landsburg, "The Armchair Economist" % If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P.J. O'Rourke % The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer % A Libertarian Constitutional Amendment: Congress shall make no law. % Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. -- Ayn Rand % see also http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2005/08/macaulay_on_cau.html % The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -- Ayn Rand % Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. -- Ayn Rand % Ne jugez pas les Collectivistes comme étant des "idéalistes sincères mais égarés". La proposition de réduire certains hommes à l'état d'esclave pour dans l'intérêt d'autres hommes n'est pas un idéal; la brutalité n'est pas "idéaliste", quelqu'objet qu'elle affiche. Ne dites jamais que le désir de "faire le bien" par la force est une bonne intention. Ni la soif de pouvoir ni la stupidité ne sont de bonnes intentions. -- Ayn Rand % A society that robs an individual of the product of his efforts, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment - a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man's nature is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. -- Ayn Rand % The American businessmen, as a class, have demonstrated the greatest productive genius and the most spectacular achievements ever recorded in the economic history of mankind. What reward did they receive from our culture and its intellectuals? The position of a hated, persecuted minority. The position of a scapegoat for the evils of the bureaucrats. -- Ayn Rand % To this, I shall add one more example: the victim controls the torturer, because if the victim screams very loudly at a particular method of torture, this is the method the torturer will select to use. -- Ayn Rand, expounding behaviorist pseudo-psychology, in "Philosophy: Who Needs It?", "The Stimulus and the Response" % Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. -- Ayn Rand % Ne considérez pas les Collectivistes comme des "idéalistes sincères mais fourvoyés". La proposition de réduire certains hommes à l'esclavage au profit d'autres hommes n'est pas un idéal; la brutalité n'a rien d'"idéaliste", quel que soit son objet. Ne dites jamais que le désir de "faire le bien" par la force relève d'une bonne intention. Ni la soif de pouvoir ni la stupidité ne sont de bonnes intentions. -- Ayn Rand % The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master on a slave plantation. -- Frank H. Knight % "Lippmann's The Good Society" % The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 46, No. 6. (Dec., 1938), p. 869. % resume par E.B. ainsi: Quand on poste une annonce "cherche fouetteur d'esclaves", faut pas s'attendre à ce que ce soit mère Teresa qui postule. % "To alcohol! The cause of... and solution to all of life's problems!" -- Homer Simpson, quoted by H. Duray about Addiction to Government % Don't tread on me. -- Nemo me impune lacesset. -- Nul ne m'agresse impunément. % In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes. -- Thomas Paine, "Rights of Man" % The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers. -- David Boaz, CATO Institute % He cites Tom Paine as his source: http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-01-99.html % % Google also finds this: http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dhart/classicalliberalism/realliberalism/e.html There are two distinct classes of men in the Nation, those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon the taxes. -- Thomas Paine % The Law of Eristic Escalation is as follows: Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos. Fenderson's Amendment adds that the tighter the order in question is maintained, the longer the consequent chaos takes to escalate, but the more it does when it does. % From Wikipedia: Anomy % I have many lucky numbers: 45, 357, 9, etc etc etc. but 911 is NOT one of them - I440r % Les lois sont la manifestation du Mal dans le monde. Suprême ruse du diable, les lois institutionnalisent le Mal en lui donnant l'apparence du Bien. -- Christian Michel, http://www.liberalia.com/htm/cm_obeir_lois.htm % Legislation is the manifestation of Evil in the world. Legislation is the supreme camouflage of the devil, for it institutionalises Evil by giving it the appearance of Good. -- Christian Michel, http://www.liberalia.com/htm/cm_obey_laws.htm % La propriété naturelle, qui interdit de voler aux puissants comme aux faibles. -- François Guillaumat, corrigeant Anatole France % La règle absolue, axiomatique, est que la redistribution politique est administrée par les puissants aux dépens des faibles. La règle générale est qu'elle se fait au profit de ces mêmes puissants. La vraisemblance veut que si les riches ne sont pas puissants, ni les puissants riches, ça ne dure généralement pas très longtemps -- François Guillaumat % Le port d'armes est la marque distinctive de l'homme libre. -- Henri Guisan % (commandant des forces suisses durant la deuxième guerre mondiale) % % http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/05/20/1627214&cid=113 Please -- here's the main difference between big government and big business. Big Business has to *sell* the Vietnam War to you. Big Government can just draft your ass and ship you overseas under threat of imprisonment and/or death. Now, which one is better again? Maybe you need to spend some *more* time thinking about it. -- rho@netdoor.com on Slashdot, 2001/05/20 % % found on Nick Berggren's page http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/politics.htm "Ask not what the government can do for you. Ask what the government is doing to you." - David Friedman, "The Machinery of Freedom", p. 21 % % Page 103 In an external environment which constantly changes and in which consequently some individuals will always be discovering new facts, and where we want them to make use of this new knowledge, it is clearly impossible to protect all expectations. It would decrease rather than increase certainty if the individuals were prevented from adjusting their plans of action to the new facts whenever they became known to them. In fact, many of our expectations can be fulfilled only because others constantly alter their plans in the light of new knowledge. If all our expectations concerning the actions of particular other persons were protected, all those adjustments to which we owe it that in constantly changing circumstances somebody can provide for us what we expect would be prevented. Which expectations ought to be protected must therefore depend on how we can maximize the fulfilment of expectations as a whole. -- F.A. Hayek, "Law, Legislation and Liberty", I.4.e % % Page 141 Justice is not concerned with the results of the various transactions but only with whether the transactions themselves are fair. -- F.A. Hayek, "Law, Legislation and Liberty", I.6.j % "There could hardly be a more unbearable -- and more irrational -- world than one in which the most eminent specialists in each field were allowed to proceed unchecked with the realization of their ideals" -- Friedrich A. Hayek % Il pourrait difficilement y avoir un monde plus insupportable -- et plus irrationnel -- qu'un monde où les plus éminents spécialistes de chaque domaine auraient le pouvoir de réaliser leurs fantasmes sans aucune restriction. -- Friedrich A. Hayek % The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people - he is not an egalitarian - but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are. -- F. A. Hayek, "Why I Am Not a Conservative" % Le libéral ne nie pas qu'il y ait des personnes supérieures - il n'est pas égalitariste - mais il conteste que quiconque ait autorité pour désigner ceux qui font partie de cette élite. -- F. A. Hayek, "Pourquoi je ne suis pas un conservateur" % %Find the proper citation from "The Road To Serfdom"... %Le libéralisme est une attitude d'humilité face au processus social. XXX % -- Friedrich A. Hayek %[Classical] liberalism is an attitude of humility with regard to the social process. XXX % % vu sur http://myweb.worldnet.fr/~girodou/libres.htm Le libéralisme n'est pas une doctrine économique mais une théorie du droit. % Classical liberalism is not an economic doctrine. It is a theory of Law. % They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 % "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 % "La démocratie, c'est deux loups et un agneau votant ce qu'il y aura au dîner. La liberté, c'est un agneau bien armé qui conteste le scrutin." -- Ben Franklin, 1759 % In a democracy, mass opinion creates power. Power diverts funds to the manufacturers of opinion, who manufacture more, etc. [...] This feedback loop generates a playing field on which the most competitive ideas are not those which best correspond to reality, but those which produce the strongest feedback. -- Mencius Moldbug % http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/07/olxiv-rules-for-reactionaries.html % "A society that puts equality -- in the sense of equality of outcome -- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests." -- Milton Friedman % Most economic fallacies derive... from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. -- Milton Friedman % "A true conservative is someone who explains to you that government doesn't work, gets elected and then proves it!" -- Milton Friedman % There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. -- P. J. O'Rourke % Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. -- Thomas Jefferson % Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt, 1783 % Pyramid schemes are illegal. Social Security is a pyramid scheme. % -- Alan Grimes Les systèmes pyramidaux sont illégaux. La Sécurité Sociale est un système pyramidal. % L'état, c'est la grande fiction à travers la quelle tout le monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de tout le monde. -- F. Bastiat, "l'État". % Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. -- F. Bastiat, "Government". % Bon Dieu ! que de peine à prouver, en économie politique, que deux et deux font quatre; et, si vous y parvenez, on s'écrie: « c'est si clair, que c'en est ennuyeux. » - Puis on vote comme si vous n'aviez rien prouvé du tout. -- Frédéric Bastiat, "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas", 1850 % What a lot of trouble to prove in political economy that two and two make four; and if you succeed in doing so, people cry, 'It is so clear that it is boring.' Then they vote as if you had never proved anything at all. -- Frederic Bastiat, "What Is Seen and What is Not Seen", 1850 % Il se rappela qu'il y a à Paris une grande fabrique de lois. Qu'est-ce qu'une loi ? se dit-il. C'est une mesure à laquelle, une fois décrétée, bonne ou mauvaise, chacun est tenu de se conformer. Pour l'exécution d'icelle, on organise une force publique, et, pour constituer ladite force publique, on puise dans la nation des hommes et de l'argent. % -- Frédéric Bastiat, "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas", 1850 % He recollected that at Paris there is a great manufactory of laws. "What is a law?" said he to himself. "It is a measure to which, when once it is decreed, be it good or bad, everybody is bound to conform. For the execution of the same a public force is organized, and to constitute the said public force, men and money are drawn from the nation. % The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. -- F. Bastiat % Economic Sophisms, I.21.3 "Raw materials" % Ce qu'il y a de pire, pour une bonne cause, ce n'est pas d'être bien attaquée, mais d'être mal défendue. -- Frédéric Bastiat, Sophismes Économiques, I.21.3 % % in http://bastiat.org/fr/1profit_2pertes.html Il y a maintenant dix-sept ans qu'un publiciste, que je ne nommerai pas, [...] On me demandera peut-être pourquoi je ne cite pas le nom de l'auteur ? Parce que mon maître de philosophie m'a appris que cela met quelquefois en péril l'effet de la citation. -- F. Bastiat % On me demandera peut-être pourquoi je ne cite pas le nom de l'auteur ? Parce que mon maître de philosophie m'a appris que cela met quelquefois en péril l'effet de la citation. -- Auteur connu dont je ne révélerai pas le nom. % I will probably be asked why I don't cite the author's name? Because my philosophy teacher taught me that it sometimes jeopardizes the effects of the quote. -- Quote Author's Name Withheld. % % Entre un mauvais et un bon Économiste, voici toute la différence: l'un s'en tient à l'effet _visible_; l'autre tient compte et de l'effet qu'on voit et de ceux qu'il faut prévoir. Mais cette différence est énorme, car il arrive presque toujours que, lorsque la conséquence immédiate est favorable, les conséquences ultérieures sont funestes, et vice versa. - D'où il suit que le mauvais Économiste poursuit un petit bien actuel qui sera suivi d'un grand mal à venir, tandis que le vrai économiste poursuit un grand bien à venir, au risque d'une petit mal actuel. -- Frédéric Bastiat, "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas", 1850 % Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, - at the risk of a small present evil. -- Frederic Bastiat, "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen", 1850 % Le plus pressé, ce n'est pas que l'État enseigne, mais qu'il laisse enseigner. Tous les monopoles sont détestables, mais le pire de tous, c'est le monopole de l'enseignement. -- F. Bastiat, http://bastiat.org/fr/maudit_argent.html % C'est une grande question de savoir s'il n'est pas dans la nature d'une force incontestablement dominante d'abuser toujours d'elle-même. Quant à moi, je ne m'y fie pas, et j'aimerais autant attendre d'une pierre qui tombe la puissance qui doit l'arrêter dans sa chute, que de confier à la force sa propre limite. -- Frédéric Bastiat, Sophismes économiques (Physiologie de la spoliation) % Our system is defined to prevent majority politicians from overtly oppressing minorities. However, our system is also overtly defined to let majorities elect majority politicians and not let minorities wield electoral power. Kinda funny... one part of our constitution tries to fix a problem which the other half of the constitution tries to create! -- Lee Salzman , about the US political system. % The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. -- John Locke, "A Treatise Concerning Civil Government" % There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all. -- Robert A. Heinlein ("Life-Line") % Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. -- Robert Heinlein % Progress doesn't come from early risers - progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. -- Robert Heinlein % Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % If you don't like yourself, you *can't* like other people. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % 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. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % 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. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Never appeal to a man's "better nature". He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck". -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil *master*". -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent -- it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute -- get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty", "meaningless", or "dishonest", and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonne, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % You live and learn. Or you don't live long. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbowroom is pleasanter -- and much safer. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Rub her feet. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % In a family argument, if it turns out you are right -- apologize at once. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % The greatest productive force is human selfishness. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. -- Robert A. Heinlein % Yield to temptation; it may never pass your way again. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Natural laws have no pity. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Political tags -- such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative and so forth -- are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from higher motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid.) -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance -- -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please-- this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time-- and squawk for more! So learn to say No--and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be *yours*. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.) -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" % If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit. -- H. L. Hunt % In the long run, John Maynard Keynes is dead. -- John Perich % Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. -- Edward Abbey % A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -- Edward Abbey % Every country has an army, either its own or a foreign one. % From a German Bundeswehr ad, as cited in http://www.aicgs.org/analysis/c/bind030306.aspx % Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime. -- Edward Abbey % XXX - double check! % More Edward Abbey quotes on http://www.abbeyweb.net/quotes.htx % I've never been able to figure out for _whom_ we're saving the irreplaceable resources. If _we_ aren't allowed to use them, then the next generation shouldn't use them either, nor the one after that. -- Harry Browne (HIFFIAUW) % One can be so anxious to put his "best foot forward" that he doesn't even notice that it isn't his own foot. -- Harry Browne (HIFFIAUW) % Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone. -- Rudyard Kipling % It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially self-liberation -- that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness. -- Max Stirner % Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. -- Francis Bacon % "[U]n anarchiste est un libéral intransigeant." -- Emile Faguet An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal. -- Emile Faguet % -- Émile Faguet, Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvième siècle, Vol. 1 (Paris: Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, c. 1898), p. 226. % cité par Pierre Lemieux. % "Le plus grand ennemi de l'humanité est le prince et rien que le prince. S'il n'y avait pas de gouvernants tout homme aurait vécu pour lui-même et se serait assuré ce qui était à son bénéfice." -- Huang Lizhou (1610-1695) % "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address % Betting markets, and speculative markets more generally, seem to do very well at aggregating information. To have a say in a speculative market, you have to "put your money where your mouth is." Those who know they are not relevant experts shut up, and those who do not know this eventually lose their money, and then shut up. Speculative markets in essence offer to pay anyone who sees a bias in current market prices to come and correct that bias. -- R. Hanson % -- Robin Hanson, in http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html % Finagle's Laws of Information: The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay. % http://www.health.uottawa.ca/biomech/csb/laws/science.htm % Les lois de l'information de Finagle: L'information que vous avez n'est pas l'information vous voulez. L'information que vous voulez n'est pas l'information dont vous avez besoin. L'information dont vous avez besoin n'est pas celle que vous pouvez obtenir. L'information vous pouvez obtenir coûte davantage que vous êtes prêt à payer. % It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science". But it *is* totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. -- Murray Rothbard % Ce n'est pas un crime que d'être ignorant en économie, car il s'agit après tout d'une discipline spécialisée, considérée par beaucoup comme une "science affligeante". Mais il est totalement irresponsable de vociférer bruyamment une opinion sur des sujets économiques tout en restant dans cet état d'ignorance. -- Murray Rothbard % %%% War % % These and many quotes on http://www.fortliberty.org/quotes/quotes-war.shtml % I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. -- John Adams in letter to Abigail Adams, Post May 12, 1780 % War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. 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 % %%% Politics % Most people think they need a ruler. Perhaps we should give them a fake one that doesn't actually do anything, and then they won't think about it. It is sort of like giving an infant a pacifier. -- Perry Metzger % %On parle beaucoup de ce que les hommes font du pouvoir mais pas assez %de ce que le pouvoir fait des hommes. % Google me retrouve ceci: Les livres d'histoire racontent toujours ce que les hommes font du pouvoir, mais ils feraient mieux de raconter ce que le pouvoir fait des hommes. % -- Françoise Giroud, « Le bon plaisir », Ed. Mazarine. % Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Casey % Classmate of W.J. Clinton at Georgetown U. (1992) % The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate. -- Mark Twain % The socialist says: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." What it really advocates in practice: "From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed." % Vous le savez, traiter quelqu'un de menteur est une accusation rude, et la personne concernée réagit en général avec vivacité quand sa franchise est ainsi mise en question. Mais qualifier un communiste de menteur est quelque chose de relativement frustrant. Pouvez-vous insulter un porc en le traitant de porc? Les communistes ne sont pas tenus par nos règles morales. Ils disent que tout crime, y compris le mensonge, est moral s'il permet de faire avancer la cause du socialisme. C'est Karl Marx tel qu'interprété par Lénine. -- Ronald Reagan % traduit par Guy Millière http://www.pageliberale.org/commentaire.php?niw=1233 % Calling a Communist a liar is pretty frustrating. How do you insult a pig by calling it a pig? Communists are not bound by our morality. They say that any crime, including lying, is moral if it advances the cause of socialism. -- Ronald Reagan % If all values are relative, then cannibalism is a matter of taste. -- Leo Strauss % We have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksniff, was a man whose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that they were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical. -- G. K. Chesterton % http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/07/olxiv-rules-for-reactionaries.html % % http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2006/10/socialisms_iron.html Socialism (by Saadat Hasan Manto) He loaded all his belongings onto a truck and was driving to another town when he was waylaid by a mob. Eyeing the goods greedily, one man said to the other, 'Just look at all that booty he is decamping with.' The owner smiled proudly, 'What you see here is my personal property.' Some of the men laughed. 'We know.' There was a yell from the mob, 'Don't let this capitalist get away. He is nothing but a robber with a truck.' % Grâce à la bureaucratie et au socialisme, il n'y aura bientôt que deux partis en France: ceux qui vivent de l'impôt et ceux qui en meurent. [Because of bureaucracy and socialism, there will soon be only two parties left in France: those who live out of taxes, and those who die out of taxes.] -- Achille Tournier, Pensées d'automne % http://www.metapolitique.net/glossaire/b.htm % La politique est le seul métier qui se passe d'apprentissage, sans doute parce que les fautes en sont supportées par d'autres que par ceux qui les ont commises. -- Achille Tournier, Pensées d'automne % Politics is the only profession that does without learning, probably because those who suffer from mistakes are not the same as those who make them. -- Achille Tournier, Pensées d'automne % % Les deux suivantes viennent de % http://lemondewatch.blogspot.com/2005_08_21_lemondewatch_archive.html La France tuera la politique ou la politique tuera la France. -- Achille Tournier % Quiconque fait des affaires et contribue à la prospérité du pays est suspect et toute entreprise qui ne se ruine pas est tenue pour criminelle. -- Yves Guyot (Illustration, janvier 1896) % Une société qui estime plus le voleur que le mendiant, et plus le mendiant que la prostituée, est une société qui a donné à l'honneur son sens le plus vide et le plus barbare. -- Joël-Alexis Bialkiewicz % "Politics" is made up of two words, "Poli", which is Greek for "many", and "tics", which are blood sucking insects. -- Gore Vidal % To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn % Pour qu'un humain fasse le mal, il faut tout d'abord qu'il soit convaincu de faire le bien. -- Alexandre Soljénitsyne % You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn % Fascists divide in two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists -- Ennio Flaiano % Guns & bullets don't kill people -- blood loss and organ damage kills people. % -- DrSkwid, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30197&cid=3241209 % "'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer." -- Joseph Sobran % "No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866. % "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -- P.J. O'Rourke % "We will never get the money out of politics until we get the politics out of money." -- Alex Tabarrok % http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/06/subsidy_suckers.html % %La liberté ne peut être imposée, mais seulement choisie. %... et en général il faut se battre pour la choisir % -- Bernard Lang La liberté n'est jamais accordée, elle doit se prendre. -- Max Stirner % L'Unique et sa propriété, cité par Guy Millière. % http://www.catallaxia.org/article.php?sid=120 % Ce n'est pas parce qu'ils sont nombreux à avoir tort qu'ils ont nécessairement raison -- Coluche sur la démocratie % One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power. -- Bertrand Russell % Democracy is but government of the busy, by the bully, for the bossy. -- Arthur Seldon, "The Dilemma of Democracy" % subtitle: "The Political Economics of Over-Government" % "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." -- Alexander Fraser Tyler, "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic" % The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. -- Alexis de Tocqueville % I've got an idea that would revolutionize the way we do our weekly shopping[:] Every few years, we all vote for our favourite supermarket company. The one that gets more votes across the country than any other then gets to deliver our shopping every week to all of us, regardless of whom we voted for. It delivers goods of its own choosing, at prices that it sets. It will make us buy Pedigree Chum even if we don't have a dog. [...] Now, this is probably the stupidest idea you've ever heard. But it's exactly how we buy our political services. -- Chris Dillow % http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2004/12/analogy_for_gov.html % Just as the purpose of education in monarchies is to enoble men's hearts, so its purpose in despotic states is to debase them. In despotic states education must be servile. Even those holding power benefit from such an education, for no one can be a tyrant without at the same time being a slave... Absolute obedience presupposes ignorance in the person who obeys; ignorance is presupposed as well in the person who commands. For he need not deliberate, doubt, or reason; he has only to will... Thus education is in one sense nonexistent. Everything previously known must be wiped out, so that something may be taught. It is necessary first to make a man into a bad subject in order to create a good slave. -- Montesquieu, Spirit of the laws, 1748 % Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure. -- Robert LeFevre (1911 - 1986) % L. Neil Smith heard LeFevre say it in 1972 % Never explain. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will never believe you anyway. -- Elbert Hubbard % Please leave the State in the toilets where you found it. % Prière de laisser l'État dans les toilettes où vous l'avez trouvé. % Les politiciens sont commes des couches-culottes: Ils doivent être changés souvent. Et pour les mêmes raisons. [Ça, et le fait qu'ils ne sont pas utiles à une population adulte -- Faré] % Politicians are like diapers: they must be changed often. And for the same reasons. [Also, adults don't need either of them. -- Faré] % Politicians are like rats. What they steal for themselves is minuscule compared to what they destroy getting it. % Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt and the Pope fly over Poland. Suddenly, their plane is caught in a storm and crashes. Who is saved? [rot13'd answer: Cbynaq] % Ça se passe à Saint-Pétersbourg en 1917. La petite-fille d'un des décembristes entend du bruit dehors, et elle envoie sa bonne voir ce qui se passe. La bonne revient et lui dit « Madame, c'est la Révolution ». Alors la petite-fille d'un des décembristes se réjouit et dit « C'est bien ça, mon grand-père, il voulait la Révolution. Va voir ces gens et demande-leur exactement ce qu'ils veulent. » La bonne revient et lui rapporte « Madame, ces gens veulent qu'il n'y ait plus de riches dans le pays. » Alors la petite-fille d'un des décembristes répond « Tiens, c'est étrange, mon grand-père, lui, il voulait qu'il n'y ait plus de pauvres. » % Les prolétaires des années 1800 en Europe et des années 1950 en Asie et en Afrique, ne sont pas d'anciens riches ruinés par le capitalisme. On pourrait dire que ce sont d'anciens morts qui ne meurent plus. Leur existence vient de la suppression des famines par le progrès des techniques de production. -- Jean Fourastié, Lettre ouverte à quatre milliards d'hommes, p.81 % The proletarians of the 1800s in Europe et of the 1950s in Asia and Africa, are not former wealthy people bankrupted by capitalism. We could say that they are former deceased people who cease to die. Their existence is due to the suppression of famines by the progress of production techniques. -- Jean Fourastié, Open Letter to Four Billion People % The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. -- H. L. Mencken % The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. -- H. L. Mencken % The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. -- H.L. Mencken % Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. -- Charles Mackay % When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. -- Thomas Jefferson % The entire work force of the Communist countries is subjected to periodic purges (called verifications in Newspeak). One of the most severe took place in 1957 when Novotny, rattled by the Hungarian Revolution the year before, tried hard to weed out "radishes" (red outside, white inside) from all but insignificant positions. Any one of the following would often result in the loss of one's job: Bourgeois or Jewish family background, relatives abroad, contacts with former capitalists, having lived in a Western country, insufficient knowledge of Communist literature, and others. A man is interviewed by a "Verification Committee." "What kind of family do you come from?" "A rich, Jewish family." "And your wife?" "A German aristocrat." "Have you ever been to the West?" "I spent most of my life in England." "How did you make a living there?" "A friend supported me." "Where did you get the money from?" "He owned a textile factory." "Who was Lenin?" "Never heard of him." "What is your name?" "Karl Marx." % La meilleure place pour un gréviste, ce moustique jaune et nuisible, c'est le *camp de concentration*. -- Léon Trotski, 12 février 1920 % In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work does not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.- Leon Trotsky % To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary... These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. -- Che Guevara % http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/10/post_494.html % I understand that the new Telecom Bill that just passed Congress has outlawed the ab*rting of tasks (or at least the discussion of it on Usenet). This process will heretofore be called 'termination enhancement', and an ab*rted task will be considered 'termination-enhanced'. Please update your programs and language standards. -- Henry G. Baker % Perhaps those of us who care about quality programs have not spoken up often enough -- `for bad programs to triumph requires only that good programmers remain silent.' I call this passivity the `Silence of the Lambdas.' -- hbaker % http://www.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-03.html % "As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." -- Christopher Dawson, The Judgment of Nations, 1942 % %%% Economics % [...] there is what I call the "roundtrip fallacy": it is a mistake to use, as journalists and some economists do, statistics without logic but the reverse does not hold: It is not a mistake to use logic without statistics. -- N. C. Taleb, Fooled by Randomness, 2004. % http://www.mises.org/story/2056 % One good Husband is worth two good Wives; for the scarcer things are, the more they're valued. -- Benjamin Franklin % http://www.stephankinsella.com/2005/06/husbands-wives.php % http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote31.htm % When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any. -- Edgar Watson Howe % A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles. -- Edgar Watson Howe % %%% Education vs Academia % It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -- Albert Einstein % You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it for himself. -- Galileo Galilei % Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy. -- Ronald T. Azuma, http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html % When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well. I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time. -- John J. Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900 % http://goingware.com/reputation/ as exerpted from the ClueTrain Manifesto % http://www.cluetrain.com/ % If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you. -- Don Marquis % A student comes to a young professor's office hours. She glances down the hall, closes his door, kneels pleadingly. "I would do anything to pass this exam." She leans closer to him, flips back her hair, gazes meaningfully into his eyes. "I mean..." she whispers, "...I would do...anything!!!" He returns her gaze. "Anything???" "Yes,... Anything!!!" His voice turns to a whisper. "Would you ... study???" -- scene from "The Eiger Sanction", starring Clint Eastwood. % %%% SPAM % Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. -- Stephen Leacock. % DO NOT SEND JUNK E-MAIL: "By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the definition of a telephone fax machine. By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any unsolicited advertisement to such equipment. By Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a violation of the aforementioned Section is punishable by action to recover actual monetary loss, or $500, whichever is greater, for each violation." % Pursuant to US Code Title 47, Section 227, unsolicited commercial E-mail sent to this address is subject to a $500 archival fee per copy. Sending such E-mail after any receipt of this notice implies acceptance of these terms. A copy of USC Title 47, Section 227 may be found online at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.html % Nobody expects the SPAMISH INQUISITION! % Hi! I'm a signature virus. Copy me into your sig file and help me spread! % Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus. Hi! I'm a signature virus. Copy me into your sig file and help me spread! % %%% Silly % /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign \ / X Against HTML / \ in e-mail & news % (Taken from a .sig on the modperl mailing list) % There are three types of people in the world; those who can count, and those who can't. % There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't. % http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/ % Il y a 10 sortes de personnes dans le monde: ceux qui comprennent la numération binaire, et ceux qui ne la comprennent pas. % There are two types of people in the world: People who think there are two kinds of people, and people who don't. % Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM'. -- Alan Cox % When my time on earth is completed, I want to go quietly in my sleep, like my grandfather ... not screaming in terror, like his passengers. % Two wrongs don't make a right -- but three lefts do. % The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part. -- Groucho Marx % Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot. -- Groucho Marx % I find television very educating: Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. -- Groucho Marx % "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again." - TV listing for the Wizard of Oz in the Marin Independent Journal % When you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all. % It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt. % The ancients stole all our ideas from us. -- Mark Twain % In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. -- Mark Twain % The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. -- Mark Twain % Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. -- Calvin Coolidge % If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? -- Mark Twain % Here in America we have the MELTING POT theorem, "The scum rises to the top and those on the bottom get burned." % \|/ ____ \|/ ~@-/ oO \-@~ /_( \__/ )_\ \__U_/ % Les portefeuilles imperméables sont faits pour garder l'argent liquide. % A new poll indicates that if the presidential election were held tomorrow nobody would vote, because they think the election is in November." -- Dennis Miller % Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer. -- A. Gide pas possible ! il connaissait déjà l'Usenet ! -- Nat Loi de Lieberman : Tout le monde ment, mais cela importe peu car personne n'écoute. % Optimiste : « ce verre à moitié plein » Pessimiste : « il est à moitié vide » Réaliste : « avant de me prononcer j'aimerais savoir ce qu'il contient » Ingénieur : « il est deux fois trop gros » % Cet oligophrénarche (du grec oligos, rare, peu nombreux, peu abondant, phrêne, intelligence, cerveau, et arkhon, chef. Donc, un oligophrénarche est un chef à l'intelligence peu marquée) passablement konopsoproctotrype (du grec konops moucheron, proctos, anus et trypao, je fore, je perce) et carrément latérocalcéograde (du latin lateralis, à côté, calceus, chaussure, et gradi, marcher. Donc un latérocalcéograde est un type qui marche à côté de ses pompes.), atteint de surcroît d'une grave hypertrichose palmaire (du grec hyper, très important, trichos, poil, cheveu. Donc, l'hypertrichose palmaire est le fait d'avoir un grand poil dans la main), n'avait vraiment pas inventé le butyrotome (du grec bouturos, beurre, tomé, coupure, par extension 'qui coupe'. Donc le butyrotome est le fil à couper le beurre) malgré sa tendance à la protostichophilie (du grec proto, premier, stichos, rang, ligne, et philie, inclination. Donc, la protostichophilie est la propension à se mettre au premier plan. Est sans doute plus connue, la protostichophobie, maladie des élèves qui ne se mettent jamais au premier rang de la classe). -- Michel Dubesset % femme.tar.gz (super programme, mais pas de documentation disponible) % La plupart des gens ont un travail qu'ils détestent mais grâce auquel ils gagnent un argent dont ils n'ont pas besoin, sinon pour impressionner d'autres gens ... qu'ils n'apprécient guère. % A flea and a fly in a flue were imprisoned, so what could they do? Said the fly: "let us flee!". Said the flea: "let us fly!". So they flew thru a flaw in the flue... % En théorie il n'y a pas de différence entre la théorie et la pratique, en pratique si. -- E. Chantreau % %%% Experimental Sciences (Physics, Biology, etc) % There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. -- Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea % En mathématiques, les dénominations sont arbitraires. Libre à chacun d'appeler éléphant un opérateur auto-adjoint, et trompe une décomposition spectrale. On peut alors démontrer un théorème suivant lequel tout éléphant a une trompe. Mais on n'a pas le droit de laisser croire que ce résultat aurait quoi que ce soit à voir avec de gros animaux gris. -- Sussmann % Cité par Ivar Ekeland, cité par George Lanes. % p. 123 de Ekeland, I. (1984), Le calcul, l'imprévu % (Les figures du temps de Kepler à Thom), Seuil, Paris, 169 p. % Si seulement les théoriciens savaient ce qui est derrière une mesure expérimentale et si les observateurs savaient ce qui est derrière un calcul théorique, ils se prendraient mutuellement beaucoup moins au sérieux. -- Fritz Zwicky % astrophysicien cité par JP Petit % http://www.jp-petit.com/Divers/Paranormal/Paranormal1.htm % /let theory guide your observations/, but till your reputation is well established, be sparing in publishing theory. It makes persons doubt your observations. -- Charles Darwin to a young botanist % Bragg's principle: Everything in the future is a wave, everything in the past is a particle. % The young specialist in English Lit ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, '... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.' -- Isaac Asimov % Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it -- Richard Feynman % Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. -- Ernst Haeckel % "Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month." -- Wernher Von Braun, when asked by the US government why tossing scientists at the 'space race' was not helping. % Evolution competitively selects stable cooperative patterns. % L'évolution sélectionne compétitivement des motifs coopératifs stables. % A hen is just the egg's way of making another egg -- Samuel Butler, 1872 People are DNA's way of making more DNA -- Edward O. Wilson, 1975 % Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled. -- R.P. Feynman % The Feynman problem solving Algorithm 1) Write down the problem 2) Think real hard 3) Write down the answer Murray Gell-mann in the NY Times % Il ne suffit pas de dire: "je me suis trompé"; il faut dire comment on s'est trompé. -- Claude Bernard It isn't enough to say: "I was mistaken"; one must say how one was mistaken. -- Claude Bernard % To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan % The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. -- Albert Einstein % %%% Mathematics % % From: http://math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/mquot.html Gauss, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, replied that he had reached them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them! [Karl F. Gauss (1777-1855), German mathematician] % Mathematics is the Queen of Science but she isn't very Pure; she keeps having babies by handsome young upstarts and various frog princes. --Donald Kingsbury (In "psychohistorical crisis", 2001) % Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another. -- Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle % Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language. -- Ernst Mayr % Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them. -- John von Neumann (1903-1957) % "To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. G. is (x+1)ecrable." -- Edgar Alan Poe % On the Gaussian curve: Experimentalists think that it is a mathematical theorem while the mathematicians believe it to be an experimental fact. -- Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912) [French mathematician] % Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein bisschen meschugge. (We mathematicans are all a bit crazy). -- Lev Landau % % The above Math quotes found on http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/1_5.html % via Gavin Peters % %%% Love % A pretty face is not a passport; it's a visa and it runs out fast. % Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. -- Albert Einstein % Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -- H. L. Mencken % % From Dan Clore's Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. -- Charlie Brown % % http://www.limunltd.com/numismatica/trivia/money-quotes.html "I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy." -- Steve Martin % The software engineering field is staffed primarily by men; the ratio of male to female software engineers is on the order of 15 to 1. This makes it pretty easy for women to find potential mates among their peers. However, software types have a well-earned reputation for being a little strange. While discussing the prospect of working in the software industry, one woman commented to another: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." % http://www.freeq.com/users/gypsy/humor/oodGoods.txt % Also in RHF. Also well-known joke for Alaskans. % % Conversely (adapted from http://www.wpi.edu/~egirard/main.html) Finding geek girl mates is like finding a parking space at the mall, all the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped. % % http://www.thehumorarchives.com/humor/0000435.html % %%% Death % Non Omnis Moriar (Not Everything In Me Will Die). -- Dr. José P. Rizal % That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even Death may die. -- Abdul Alhazred, Necronomicon % Death is only a milestone - albeit one that is dropped on you from a very great height -- Terry Pratchett. % %%% Procrastination % Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do. % Raptor on Slashdot % "I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged" % TCaptain #115352 on Slashdot % There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought -- David Allen, "Getting Things Done" % I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams % Those who are afraid to take the next step will have wasted their entire previous journey. -- Baron von Richthofen % %%% Conspiracy % Why is there only one Monopolies Commission? -- Lord Sutch % % From Michael K. Johnson 's signature: Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories? % %%% Static and Dynamic Binding % If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No! Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. -- Abraham Lincoln, explaining the difference between lexical scoping and dynamic scoping % %%% Psychology % Ma femme et moi avons clairement défini qui est le chef. Je prends toutes les décisions importantes. Je décide quelle est la position de la famille sur la reconnaissance de la Chine Communiste, combien de B-52 il faut pour l'armée et quoi faire à propos de la dette fédérale. Je lui laisse les petites décisions quotidiennes, comme savoir où nous allons vivre, à quelle école vont les enfants et qui nous invitons à dîner. -- Auteur Inconnu, États-Unis, années 1950. % My wife and I have clearly defined who's boss. I always take all the important decisions. I decide what is the family's take on the recognition of Communist China, how many B-52's are necessary to the armed forces and what to do about the federal debt. I leave her the petty daily decisions, like determining where we'll live, which school the kids will attend and who we'll have for dinner. -- Unknown author, USA, 1950's % %Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It wasn't reasoned into him, %and cannot be reasoned out. -- Sydney Smith % It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. -- Jonathan Swift % Entre ce que je pense, ce que je veux dire, ce que je crois dire, ce que je dis, ce que vous voulez entendre, ce que vous entendez, ce que vous croyez comprendre, ce que vous voulez comprendre, et ce que vous comprenez, il y a au moins neuf possibilités de ne pas s'entendre % trouvé sur http://perso.wanadoo.fr/patrick.madrolle/economie/e-mail.htm % Between what I think, what I try to say, what I think I say, what I actually say, what you want to hear, what you hear, what you think you understand, what you want to understand and what you do understand, there are at least nine ways to not understand each other. % A cuddle a day keeps the shrink away % as reported by Janine Bharucha % Think you can, or think you can't - either way, you'll be right. -- Henry Ford % You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -- Eric Hoffer % You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. -- Naguib Mahfouz % No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- Eleanor Roosevelt % %%% About the Turing Test % man, n: a computer that can pass the Turing test. -- Corey Sweeney % Si vous pouviez poser une seule question à un ordinateur au cours du test de Turing, qu'est-ce que vous demanderiez? -- Douglas Hofstadter, Ma Thémagie % % Below is a retranslation from french to english; original version sought. If you could ask a unique question to a computer during a Turing test, what would you ask? -- Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas % No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company. -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking machine, 1943. % Le risque est que si, un jour, les machines deviennent intelligentes, nous ne serons peut-être pas équipés mentalement pour nous en apercevoir. -- Tirésias, in J.-P. Petit, "A quoi rêvent les robots?" % The risk is that if, one day, machines become intelligent, we mightn't be mentally equipped to notice they are. -- Tirésias, in J.-P. Petit, "A quoi rêvent les robots?" % %%% Religion % If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby. % Seen on /. as the .sig of user #90044 % Ô Seigneur, s'il y a un Seigneur, sauvez mon âme, si j'ai une âme. -- Ernest Renan, Prière d'un sceptique % La bêtise humaine est la seule chose au monde qui peut donner une bonne approximation de l'infini. -- E. Renan % Atheism is a non-prophet organization. % "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein % I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. -- Frank Lloyd Wright % % A Grammar of Consent: The Existence of God in Christian Tradition % by Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991) ISBN 0 567 09591 6: % THE heart of the Christian faith is its understanding of God. % I remember E.O. James, the well-known Professor of the Philosophy % of Religion in the University of London, telling us, his students, % how on one occasion, when travelling by train, he found himself seated % opposite a man who, noting his clerical collar, said, disdainfully, % 'I suppose you believe in God!' James replied, 'Well, it all depends - You tell me what you mean by God, and I'll tell you whether I believe in him or not! -- E. O. James % Dites-moi ce que vous entendez par "Dieu" et je vous dirai si j'y crois. -- E.O. James % % From http://www.hedning.no/hedning/arkiv/cookies/ % (reviewed till [Calvin&Hobbes]) Archeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible and is believed to read 'To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental'. % Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one. % I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F Roberts % http://freelink.wildlink.com/quote_history.php % Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. % % You've got answerable questions? We've got questionable answers! % If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence of Superman. -- seen on #Atheism IRC % Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible. % "If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." -- As seen on a button % Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That unalterable rule applies both to God and man. -- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton) in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5,1887 % To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. -- Isaac Asimov % Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce % The Atheist does not say "there is no god", but he says "I do not know what you mean by god; I am without the idea of god; the word god is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny god, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me. -- Charles Bradlaugh, 'National Review', Nov. 25, 1883 % To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy. -- David Brooks, "The Necessity of Atheism" % It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. -- Giordano Bruno (1548-burned at the stake, 1600) % Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. -- George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), [Lord Byron] % %%% Tautologies % May you live all the days of your life. -- Jonathan Swift % What you do today will cost you a day of your life. % What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind! -- Bertrand Russell's Grand Mother, In Karl Popper, The Unended Quest % %%% Gödel sentences and meta-sentences about self-contradiction. % The War on Terrorism is missing the point: what we need is a War on War! -- Kennita Watson % Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. -- Jonathan Swift % La superstition porte malheur. -- Paul Carvel % Superstition brings bad luck. -- Paul Carvel % Comment prétendons-nous qu'un autre puisse garder notre secret si nous ne pouvons le garder nous-même. -- La Rochefoucauld % Invent a clever saying, and your name shall live forever. -- Anonymous % In a comp.lang.lisp message by Coby Beck 2003-04-15 % Invente un aphorisme éclairant, et ton nom sera immortel. -- Anonyme % Be inconsistent -- but don't do it all the time. -- Unknown % Obscenity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers. % -- Question authority! -- Yeah, says who? % Ever stop thinking and forget to start again? % Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who shall watch the watchmen themselves?) -- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347 % Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Qui gardera les gardiens eux-mêmes?) -- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347 % The secret of survival is: Always expect the unexpected. -- Dr. Who % %% The following are from %% http://www.internetbumperstickers.com/declare.html % I have not yet begun to procrastinate % I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. % I'll start exercising as soon as I'm into shape. % A president worth voting for wouldn't run for office. % %%% Bumper Sticker % Work harder! Millions on welfare depend on you. % Travaille plus dur! Des millions d'oisifs comptent sur toi. % %%% Getting Things Done % Failing to plan is planning to fail. % %%% Management % Director is a misnomer. You're a hoper. You put all these people together and you hope it all works out. -- Frank Oz, director of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" % %%% Other % A nazi deathcamp survivor defined truth as follows: believing it does not increase your chance of dying. % From http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/12/matthew-yglesias-anatomy-of.html#6355653101703866037 % The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later. -- Aristotle % Skill without imagination is craftsmanship. Imagination without skill is contemporary art. -- Tom Stoppard % Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics. - old military saying % % http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_ford.html Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently. -- Henry Ford, who had two flops before founding Ford Motor Co. % Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. -- Henry Ford % If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. -- Henry Ford % If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. -- Henry Ford % It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste. -- Henry Ford % It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. -- Henry Ford % Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward. -- Henry Ford % Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all. -- Henry Ford % Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it. -- Henry Ford % My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me. -- Henry Ford % Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. -- Henry Ford % Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. -- Henry Ford % One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do. -- Henry Ford % Quality means doing it right when no one is looking. -- Henry Ford % The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time. -- Henry Ford % The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed. -- Henry Ford % The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like as "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. -- Henry Ford % There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured. -- Henry Ford % There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. -- Henry Ford % There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible. -- Henry Ford % Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford % Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving. -- Henry Ford % We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today. -- Henry Ford % Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service. -- Henry Ford % When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. -- Henry Ford % You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together. -- Henry Ford % That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. -- George Santayana % The Keyboard is mightier than the Death Ray... % http://www.alhproducts.com/alhintro.html % "Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most..." -- Ozzy Ozbourne %