config/Quotes/attributed-quotes.txt
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A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. -- Bill Vaughan A city is a large community where people are lonesome together -- Herbert Prochnow A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern. -- Edgar A. Shoaff A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -- Ogden Nash A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -- Winston Churchill A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. -- H. L. Mencken A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. -- John Ciardi A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts. -- Herbert V. Prochnow A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. -- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910) A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- H. H. Munroe A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors. -- William Ralph Inge (1860 - 1954) A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him. -- Sir Winston Churchill, 1952 A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon. -- Steel City News A recession is when your neighbor loses his job; depression is when you lose your job. Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his. -- Ronald Reagan A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster A University is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi A University without students is like an ointment without a fly. -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Herbert Hoover According to my best recollection, I don't remember. -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime. -- David Letterman Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!" Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!" -- Oliver Herford Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. -- Sinclair Lewis After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more advanced than the lichen family. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do" After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi. -- P. J. O'Rourke All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific. -- Jane Wagner All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States. -- Vic Gold All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals. -- Peter Singer All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second. -- Jim Fiebig All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. -- Sean O'Casey All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. -- Francois Fenelon Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. -- Dave Barry Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. -- Abraham Lincoln Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. -- Ernest Hemingway Ambiguity Error: when something is definitely wrong, or maybe not -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. -- John O'Hara An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. -- James Michener, "Space" An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. - For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. -- Sydney J. Harris Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. -- Robert Benchley Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. -- Samuel Goldwyn Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging. -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new computer system. As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. -- Woody Allen At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.* At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. -- Marshall Lumsden Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching? -- Annonymous Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you. -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before, He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" Block moves: what happens when a hacker rents a house on the street. Block copy: there goes the neighborhood -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) But we've only fondled the surface of that subject. -- Virginia Masters Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain Computer Science: the fastest growing voodoo art course in American colleges and universities -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse. -- Jawaharlal Nehru Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they [may] be yours too." -- Dave Haynie Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. -- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962) Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. -- Dick Brandon Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. -- H.Jackson Browne Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- Howard Aiken Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. -- Charles Schultz Doust thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. -- Benjamin Franklin Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. -- W. Somerset Maugham Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't. -- Robert Orben Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped. -- Groucho Marx Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -- Will Rogers Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work -- Robert Orben Fatal bug -- to have a Volkswagen drop on you -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 First things first; but not necessarily in that order -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who" For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something. -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway. -- Annonymous From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults" God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean. -- Albert Einstein Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it. -- Agatha Christie Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. -- Plato Gosh that takes me back ... or forward. That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell. -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who" Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. -- Redd Foxx However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea. -- Tom K. Ryan I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. -- Dave Barry I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. -- Fred Allen I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it. -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ... -- Steven Wright I don't have to take this abuse from you; I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me. -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters" I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. -- Elvis Presley I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it. -- Clarence Darrow I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path. -- Ronald Mabbitt I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. -- Victor Hugo I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time. -- Charles Schultz I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents. -- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading. -- Henry G.Strauss I have great faith in fools - self confidence my friends call it. -- Edgar Allan Poe I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it. -- Steven Wright I haven't been wrong since 1961, when I thought I made a mistake. -- Bob Hudson I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils. -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. -- Shirley Temple I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises! -- Winston Churchill I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain I wish I was DEAD! ... Well, no, I don't. Not Really. I wish everyone ELSE was dead. -- Calvin (Bill Waterson: Calvin and Hobbes) I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work. -- Gallagher If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again. -- Mary Beth Danielson If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. -- Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less. -- Annonymous If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. -- Vince Lombardi If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred. -- George Burns If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. -- Maslow If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. -- Earl Wilson If you want to know how I run a government, then vote me in, and then ask me -- Jean Cretien I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. -- Woody Allen I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. -- George McGovern I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. -- Mark Twain It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. -- Woody Allen It is more commonly known by its acronym, SQL, and is pronounced both as "ess-cue-ell" and as "sequel"; this manual uses the former pronunciation. -- Microsoft ODBC programmer reference (no, it doesn't talk) It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. -- Moliere It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. -- G. H. Hardy It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis. -- Margaret Bonnano It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips. -- Garfield I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx Kittens are like strings. Every yo-yo wants one. -- Garfield (Jim Davis) Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?' -- Steven Wright Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -- Mark Twain Life is like a ferrari. It goes too fast. But that's ok, because you can't afford it anyway. -- Garfield (Jim Davis) Life is what happens while your making other plans. -- John Lennon Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too? -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage. -- Ambrose Bierce Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. - Murphy's Law's of Programming # 124: Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. -- Winston Churchill Many a man's tongue broke his nose. -- Seumas MacManus Many end-of-the-world dates have been forecast. None have come true yet, to our knowledge. -- B.A. Robinson Many of you wrote to say you wanted to read a sample chapter before buying, so I made one available for preview. And yes, the chapter is thoroughly misleading as an example of the whole book. I call that "marketing." -- Scott Adams Marriage almost always interferes with romance. Any time you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere. -- Groucho Marx Maybe tomorrow I'll give up procrastination. -- Lawrence Wade Memory: the part of a computer where data is placed prior to destruction -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. -- Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. -- Bertrand Russel N - after x, the second most popular number that doesn't mean anything -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. -- John Burroughs Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it. -- Anonymous One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russel Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it. -- Alex Schure Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev Program - a random accumulation of bugs - Computer Hater's handbook (glossary) RAM - where most of the bugs are kept. ROM - where you put all the bugs that won't fit in RAM -- Computer Hater's Handbook (glossary) Remember: life is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens to you. Everyone dies, but not everyone fully lives. Too many people are having "near-life" experiences. Remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. -- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter Preposterous Words Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -- Thomas A. Edison Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life. -- Germaine Greer Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. -- Dave Barry Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made. -- George Burns Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. -- Thich Nhat Hanh Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man. -- Nikita Khrushchev The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it. -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340 The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office. -- Robert Frost The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down. -- Flip Wilson The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet. -- James Oppenheim The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. -- Mark Twain The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance. -- Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988) The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. -- G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), Orthodoxy; p. 14 The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. -- John Milton The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath. -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. -- H. L. Mencken The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. -- Joseph Stalin, 1879 - 1953 The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. -- J. Michael Straczynski The Senate trying to govern cyberspace is analogous to King George believing he could still govern the colonies even though he had never been there. -- John Perry Barlow The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make them unsafe. -- Mayor Frank Rizzo The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat -- Ogden Nash. The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it. -- Franklin P. Jones The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. -- Eden Phillpotts The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. -- E. W. Dijkstra The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. -- Robert Frost There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else. -- Cyrus Curtis There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. -- Oscar Levant These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future. -- Vernon Cooper They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. -- Mark Twain They used to say that knowledge is power. I used to think so, but I now know that they mean money. -- Lord Byron, 1788 - 1824 This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force. -- Dorothy Parker Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Travel is only glamorous in retrospect. -- Paul Theroux To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends -- Benjamin Franklin To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. -- Robert L. Stevenson Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor? It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right? -- MacNelley, "Shoe" Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, humidity, and other controllable variables, a computer will do what it damn well wants to! -- Computer Hater's Handbook We aim above the mark to hit the mark. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. -- Henry David Thoreau We know what we are, but know not what we may be. -- Shakespeare What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? -- W.C. Fields What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our country. Nice try anyway, George. -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving. -- Steven Wright When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come and get you." -- Jerry Lewis Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved -- Mark Twain You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them. Why do you find that funny? -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350 You can't sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces. -- Henry Kaiser You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles. -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food You know, it's at times like this ... that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young! Why, what did she tell you? I don't know, I didn't listen! -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. -- Olin Miller. An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country. -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) As Americans, we want peace - we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. -- George W. Bush (1946 - ), October 7, 2002 Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like. -- William O. Douglas Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it. -- Taylor Caldwell, Testimony of Two Men, 1968 Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. -- Helen Keller (1880 - 1968) "Let Us Have Faith" 1940 They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes (1879 - 1972) True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945) You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. -- Ronald Reagan Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. -- Henry Ford Comment is free… but facts are sacred -- CP Scott, 1921 Guardian editor |