...things I've said

Reality is nine tenths perception, and the rest doesn't matter

-- Michael Jardeen

sadly, facts rarely enter into the picture

[I looked at the phone he offered as if it were a grenade]

That is a conversation I do not wish to have.

Either I will go someplace I have already been,

or I will go somewhere I have no desire to be.

-- Michael Jardeen

A moment of courage, wish it had come sooner...

[Did she respond to your proposal?]

Oh yes, she gutted it like a trout.

-- Michael Jardeen

Responding to a bargaining proposal

The flies are getting thick

-- Michael Jardeen

I felt pity for the horse...

All your boyfriends are either dead or gone

I'm the only one who still cares

I'm the only one still here

...and now I'm gone!

-- Michael Jardeen

The angriest thing I have ever said, sorry Wendy

One standard to rule them all, One standard to find them,

One standard to bring them all, and in darkness bind them.

In the land of Microsoft, where shadows lie.

-- Michael Jardeen

I used this for an email sig, not really original, but fun

Teenage Daughters are the leading cause

of men taking up stupid hobbies!

-- Michael Jardeen

Oh so true...

We are born, we die

In between we ask...why?

-- Michael Jardeen

Answers are never easy...

...random quotes

No plan survives meeting the enemy

-- Moltke

In war trivial causes produce momentous events.

-- Julius Caesar

The Upper Class has all the money, and pays no taxes

The Middle Class does all the work and pays all the taxes

The Poor are there just to the scare the shit out of the Middle Class

-- George Carlin

You can lead a whore to culture.

But you can't make her think

-- Dorothy Parker

Don't believe anyone who says that life is fair,

They're trying to sell you something

-- from "The Princes Bride"

Never hire a ferret to do a weasel's job.

-- from a Budweiser ad

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions

-- Lillian Hellman

She was blacklisted for saying that to the HUA

"You Madame are ugly"

"You Sir are drunk"

"Yes, but in the morning I shall be sober"

-- Churchill & Lady Astor

I am not overreacting....I'm a teenager!

-- Katie Kaboom

A man's just gotta know his limits

-- Clint Eastwood

Dream, but don't quit your day job

-- Forest Gump

Don't expect anyone to help you.

If they do, fine, If they don't, file it away.

-- Forest Gump

Stupid is as stupid does

-- Forest Gump

There is great disorder in the heavens, and the situation is excellent.

-- Mao

Ever drifting in the stream--

Lingering in the golden gleam--

Life, What is it but a dream?

-- Lewis Carroll

But my body was like a harp, and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

-- James Joyce

...We had learned that there were pangs too sharp, griefs too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register. When emotion reached this pitch the mind choked, and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more.

-- T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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Cito enim exarescit lacrima, praesertim in alienis malis

Tears dry quickly, especially for someone else's loss

-- Cicero

Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus

We are slaves of the law in order that we may be free

-- Cicero

Facilis descensus averno

The road to hell is easy

-- Vergil

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis

I fear the Greeks, even when bearing gifts

-- Vergil

Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum

Gossip, of all evils, there is none more swift

-- Vergil

Parva leves capiunt animos

Small things fascinate little minds

-- Ovid

Qui non est hodie cras minus aptus erit

He who is not prepared today will be less so tomorrow

-- Ovid

Fides, ut anima, unde abiit eo nunquam redit

Trust, like the soul, once it has disappeared, never returns

-- Publis Syrus

Veritati aliquid extremum est, error immensus est

Truth has bounds, but error is endless

-- Seneca

Avidis natura parum est

Even the whole world would not satisfy the greedy

-- Seneca

Deligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium

Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence

-- Seneca

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

-- William Butler Yeats

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus

-- Mark Twain

Don't oppose forces, use them.

-- Bucky Fuller

God, to me...is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.

-- Bucky Fuller

The end move in politics is to pick up a gun.

-- Bucky Fuller

If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one ...

I am become Death,

The shatterer of Worlds.

-- Bhagavad-Gita

In the beginning the universe was created. This has widely been regarded as a bad move.

-- Douglas Adams

A mind is a terrible thing.

All this evolution nonsense is making me feel like a complete APE!

-- Berke Breathed

He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.

-- Orwell

What is obtained by love is retained for all time

What is obtained by hatred proves a burden for it increases hatred.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true.

-- Nietzche

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

-- Nietzche

God created woman, and boredom did indeed cease from that moment.

-- Nietzche

How do I know the past is not a fiction conceived to reconcile the difference between my state of mind and the present.

-- Douglas Adams

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

-- Douglas Adams

Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace.

-- Orwell

Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds

-- Einstein

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve.

You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

-- Martin Luther King

Don't Panic.

-- Douglas Adams

The upper class desire to remain so, the middle class wish to overthrow the upper class, and the lower class want a classless system.

-- Orwell

A chicken is an egg's way of making more eggs.

I often think it's a pity that Noah and his party didn't miss the boat.

-- Mark Twain

In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

-- Adlai Stevenson

"Where there is life there is hope." So says John Gay in the Atheist's Bible. What a starry-eyed optimist!

-- Kurt Vonnegut

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

-- Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

-- Douglas Adams

We live in our myths, we only endure reality.

-- Robert Anton Wilson?

The menu is not the meal.

-- Leary?

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'Twas brillig, and the silthy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

-- Lewis Carroll

"I believe that truth lies in the eye of the beholder."

"Isn't that supposed to be beauty?"

"Truth, beauty, it works with a lot of things."

-- Guinan to Ro

A rose by any other name...

Would never ever smell the same,

And clever is the nose that knows,

An onion that's been called a rose.

Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

-- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

-- Marx

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

-- Steven Wright

A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.

Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.

Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

Do not underestimate the power of the Force.

-- Obi Wan

I find your lack of faith, disturbing

-- Darth Vader

Do not eat the yellow snow.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

How many weeks are there in a light year?

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

It's better to burn out than to fade away.

-- Neil Young

Meditation is not what you think.

No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.

Preserve the old, but know the new.

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.

Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.

Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)

The universe is laughing behind your back.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.

To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.

Reality is the original Rorschach.

-- Malaclypse the Younger

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

-- Niels Bohr

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There's a great universe just next door...

"Did you know that there is a million bucks hidden in the house next door?" "But there is no house next door." "No? Then let's go build one."

-- Marx

It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs.

-- Mal-2

You will find that the state is the kind of orginization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Surrealism aims at the total transformation of the mind and all that resembles it

-- Brenton

Common sense is what tells you that the world is flat.

-- Mal-2

No two equals are the same.

-- Mal-2

All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.

The words of the foolish and the words of the wise are not far apart in Discordian eyes.

-- The Book of Advice

Convictions cause convicts.

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Herman Hesse. Only a handful understand Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton.

-- Slogan of Norton Cabal

With Capitalism man exploits man. With communism it's the exact opposite.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

-- Mark Twain

People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Alliance, n.: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Impartial, adj.: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Ink, n.: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ...

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Peace, n.: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?

-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"

In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."

-- Mark Twain

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

-- Mark Twain

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.

-- Mark Twain

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

-- Mark Twain

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.

-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

-- Mark Twain

One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!" "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."

A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

-- Robert Frost

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If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

-- Sir Isaac Newton

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

"God does not play dice [with the universe]". "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

-- Albert Einstein

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religous convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

-- Albert Einstein

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

-- Napoleon

I would like to suggest that you not use speed, and here's why: it is going to mess up your heart, mess up your liver, your kidneys, rot out your mind. In general this drug will make you just like your mother and father.

-- Frank Zappa

Art is anything you can get away with.

-- Marshall McLuhan

Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.

Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.

Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ...

-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

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

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, forsight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

-- Henry Kissinger

You know when you're rocking in a rocking chair, and you go so far that you almost fall over backwards, but at the last instant you catch yourself? That's how I feel all the time.

-- Steven Wright

I have a full-size map of the world. At the bottom it says "1 inch = 1 inch". I hardly ever unroll it.

-- Steven Wright (The menu is not the meal.)

Why is the alphabet in that order?

-- Steven Wright

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

In English, every word can be verbed.

Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would notify you if the record has pornographics material or material glorifying violence?"

Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."

Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's legs on the album cover is good indication that it's not for little Johnny."

-- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985

I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the sort of person I'm preaching *to*.

-- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

"I don't know what you mean by glory," Alice said Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-- that's all."

-- Lewis Carrol

Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?

-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"

User, n.: The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."

-- Dave Barry

Democracy, n.: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

-- U.S.Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn.

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Never try to out stubborn a cat.

-- Lazarus Long

Rule 46: Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.

-- H.S. Thompson

The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 p.m.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,"

-- Lewis Carrol

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I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row.'

-- Steven Wright

I love to go shopping. I love to freak out salespeople. They ask me if they can help me, and I say, 'Have you got anything I'd like?' Then they ask me what size I need, and I say, 'Extra medium.'

-- Steven Wright

Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.

-- Dennis Ritchie

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.

-- Isaac Newton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.

-- Hal Abelson

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.

-- Brian K. Reed

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

I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless.

Calling atheism a religion is like calling health an illness.

It's such a fine line between stupid and ... clever.

We feel the machine slipping from our hands

As if someone else were steering;

If we see light at the end of the tunnel,

It's the light of the oncoming train.

-- Robert Lowell

I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word in only one way.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".

-- Dave Parnas

No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report....

-- Woodrow Wilson

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.

-- Joseph Campbell

Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live, but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.

-- Socrates' Apology

When I was 16, I thought my father was the most ignorant ass that there ever was. But by the time I was 21, I was surprised to discover just how much he had learned in only 5 years.

-- Mark Twain

The universe may

be as great as they say.

But it wouldn't be missed

if it didn't exist.

-- Piet Hein

We dance around in a ring and suppose,

But the secret sits at the center and knows.

-- Robert Frost

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

-- Richard P. Feynman

Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating-- or toward the abyss.

-- Stephen Jay Gould

Whatever you do, stamp out abuses, and love those who love you.

-- Voltaire

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

-- John A. Wheeler (and you must not be looking very hard...)

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

-- Albert Einstein

You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that.

-- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything.

-- Donald E. Knuth

Time itself flows on with constant motion, just like a river: for no more than a river can the fleeting hour stand still. As wave is driven on by wave, and, itself pursued, pursues the one before, so the moments of time at once flee and follow, and are ever new.

-- Ovid

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

-- Enrico Fermi

I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

-- Galileo Galilei

The farce is finished. I go to seek a vast perhaps.

-- Francois Rabelais

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Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

-- Niels Bohr

With stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

-- Friedrich Von Schiller

[It] was the kind of place where they spell trouble TRUBIL, and if you try to correct them, they kill you.

-- Steve Martin

Poor spelling does not prove poor knowledge, but is fatal to the argument by intimidation.

-- Gene Ward Smith

It don't make no difference how you say it, just say it in a way that makes sense. Did you ever meet anybody in your life who didn't know what 'ain't' means?

-- Dizzy Dean

Gilb's Law #2: Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

There is no mathematics of faith.

The views expressed here do not necessarilly represent the unanimous view of all parts of my mind.

See the happy moron!

He doesn't give a damn

I wish I were a moron

My God! Perhaps I am!

Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand and I will break my lever.

I suppose if we couldn't react to things that didn't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.

-- Hobbes to Calvin

A little rudeness and disrespect can turn an otherwise meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and provide drama to an otherwise dull day.

-- Calvin

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad.

-- Frederik Pohl

My next-door neighbour once told me "I don't believe in God myself, but I am going to make sure my children do".

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

-- Anatole France

No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public.

-- H.L. Mencken

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

-- Emo Philips

The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way."

-- Emo Philips

That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation. Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians-- even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates-- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children.

-- H.S. Thompson

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

-- Albert Einstein

And I have no desire to get ugly. But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

-- Ogden Nash

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.

-- Jefferson

The people are that part of the state that does not know what it wants.

-- Hegel

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

-- Paul Fussell

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.

-- Senator Soaper

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

-- H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

-- E.B. White

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

-- H.L. Mencken

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

-- Boss Tweed

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

-- P.J. O'Rourke

Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

-- Harry S Truman

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Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

-- H.L. Mencken

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

-- Einstein

It's only true if it makes you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you cry.

-- R.A. Wilson

You can get more with a simple prayer and a Thompson sub-machinegun than you can with a simple prayer alone.

-- John Dillinger

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

-- H.L. Mencken

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

-- H.L. Mencken

The quickest way to a womans heart, rip her in half

--Victor Mature

I want to return to the womb, anyone's.

-- Woody Allen

It is inaccurate to say I hate eveything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office.

-- HL Mencken

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

-- H.L. Mencken

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

-- H.L. Mencken

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

-- H.L. Mencken

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

-- H.L. Mencken

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

-- H.L. Mencken

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.

-- H.L. Mencken

In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.

-- H.L. Mencken

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

-- H.L. Mencken

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

-- H.L. Mencken

An unwarlike Marine is as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

-- H.L. Mencken

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags don't wave in a vacuum.

-- Arthur C. Clarke

The forms of "firm": I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed.

-- Dr. K. J. Stavrinides

The path of least resistence, it's not just for electricity any more.

Happiness lies in conquering one's enemies, in driving them in front of oneself, in taking their property, in savoring their despair, in outraging their wives and daughters.

-- Genghis Khan

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

-- James Thurber

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

-- Mark Twain

As one psychologist remarked, Humans are a dark cellar in which a maiden aunt and a sex-crazed monkey are locked in mortal combat, the affair being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk.

The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.

-- Harlan Ellison

Anything too stupid to be said, is sung.

-- Voltaire

Of course Australia was marked for glory, for its people had been chosen by the finest judges in England.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

-- George Bernard Shaw

I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.

-- Kierkegaard

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In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed--amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.

-- Kierkegaard

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

-- Woody Allen

To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

-- Woody Allen

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

-- Groucho Marx

There are all kinds of ways to forestall graduation. Taking a term off, getting suspended, not completing courses, all of these are valid.

-- Zonker Harris

A witty saying proves nothing.

-- Voltaire

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-- Arthur C. Clarke

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

-- Jeremy S. Anderson

And remember, a day without sunshine is like...night!

-- Steve Martin

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

-- Abraham Lincoln

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

-- Albert Einstein

Some grow with responsibility, others just swell.

Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

-- Albert Einstein

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."

-- Eric Hoffer

There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, if they don't care who gets the credit.

There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

-- Winston Churchill

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."

-- Isaac Asimov

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

-- Carl Sagan

It is fatal to be right when the rest of the world is wrong.

-- Brother Theodore

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

-- Thomas Edison

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

-- Groucho Marx

A woman is asked why she cuts the ends off a ham before baking it. She explains that her mom alway did so. Her mom explains that she learned it from grandma. And grandma says, "Silly, my pan was too short for the entire ham."

'Tain't what a man don't know that hurts him; it's what he knows that just ain't so.

Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily.

-- David Byrne

Nuclear weapons can wipe out life on Earth, if used properly.

-- David Byrne

Schools are for training people how to listen to other people.

-- David Byrne

Space People read our mail. The Space People think that TV news programs are comedies, and that soap operas are news. The Space People will contact us when they can make money by doing so. The Space People think factories are musical instruments. They sing along with them. Each song lasts from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. No music on weekends.

-- David Byrne

In the future, women will have breasts all over. In the future, it will be a relief to find a place without culture. In the future, plates of food will have names and titles. In the future, we will all drive standing up. In the future, love will be taught on television and by listening to pop songs.

-- David Byrne

Once, during a trial in which she was accused of indecency on stage, the judge asked, "Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?" She answered, "On the contrary, your Honor, I was doin' my best to conceal it."

The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas Instruments.

-- PBS

"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.

-- Robertson Davies

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

-- Ovid (43BC-AD18)

It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes.

-- Buckminster Fuller

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Women's breasts are like Electric Train Sets: They're meant for kids, but usually it's the fathers who wind up playin' with them.

Religion is born in the transformation of metaphor into definition.

An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

90% Rule Of Project Schedules: The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the other 90%.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Some praise at morning what they blame at night; But always think the last opinion right.

-- Alexander Pope

It's not denial. I'm just very particular about the reality I choose to accept.

-- Calvin

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

-- Neil Armstrong

Trivial: Any problem that can be solved by a Nobel Laureate in less than 24 hours.

-- Dr. Andrew Dienes

...all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

-- H.P. Lovecraft

Without will, without individuals, there are no heroes. But neither are there villians and the absence of villains is as prostrating, as soul-destroying, as the absence of heroes.

-- Gertrude Himmelfarb

Surely few if any readers have come across the sentence they are now reading, and someone who had by chance heard or seen it could not possibly remember such a fact.

-- Noam Chomsky

The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots.

-- Ginsparg

Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.

-- William S. Burroughs

It seems that 'national security' is the root password to the Constitution. As with any dishonest superuser, the best countermeasure is strong encryption.

-- Phil Karn

What would you do with a brain if you had one?

-- Dorothy to the Scarecrow

Not only is there more stupidity than anything else in terms of universal quantity, but there is a wonderful quality to this stupidity. It is so intensely perfect that it completely overwhelms whatever it is that nature has piled up on the other pan of the scale.

Stupidity is replicating itself at an astonishing rate. It breeds easily and is self-financing.

The person who stands up and says, "This is stupid," either is asked to 'behave' or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful "Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!

-- Frank Zappa

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, or perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

Effective searching procedures become, when the search-space is sufficiently large, indistinguishable from true creativity.

-- Richard Dawkins?

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

-- Herbert Simon

The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability.

-- Andrew Spring

It is easier to build a road than to build an organization to maintain that road.

-- Arturo Israel

The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ouselves, 'Are these words true?' If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, 'Are they necessary?' At the last gate, we ask, 'Are they kind?'

-- Eknath Easwaran

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