Literary Classics

"Pull the trigger and you're garbage."

— Lady Blue

"Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..."

— a prisoner in "Life of Brian"

"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth."

— Milton

"BYTE editors are men who seperate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff."

— Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by Adlai Stevenson, Sr.

THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since there are some who might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these postings. One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too mundane to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become "I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it. Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing, I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you don't think it's wonderful. ...

— D. J. McCarthy ([email protected])

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary saftey deserve neither liberty not saftey."

— Benjamin Franklin, 1759

"I am, therefore I am."

— Akira

"Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance it ourselves."

— Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)

"I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."

— Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."

— John Wooden

"If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people most of the time."

— George Gerbner

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

— George Bernard Shaw

On the subject of C program indentation: "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."

— Blair P. Houghton

There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before).

— Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_

"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect "Hungry."

— a Larson cartoon

"But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual. The look in a face, the music of a violin. A Paris theater can be infused with the spiritual for all its solidity."

— Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice

"Love your country but never trust its government."

— from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania

I bought the latest computer; it came fully loaded. It was guaranteed for 90 days, but in 30 was outmoded! - The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT

To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks".

— Doug Thompson ([email protected])

"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained."

— The Tao of Programming

"Turn on, tune up, rock out."

— Billy Gibbons

"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't soluble in alcohol..."

— Crazy Nigel

"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."

— Thomas J. Kopp

"There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income parents' lives a misery." "... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears because of what you just said." "I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!"

— Filthy Rich and Catflap, 1986.

"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."

— Noam Chomsky

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."

— John Gall, _Systemantics_

"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it came up and bit him on his Internet."

— Ross M. Greenberg

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me at present". When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

"If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change almost all occurences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."

— Herbie Blashtfalt

"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

— Marvin the paranoid android

Contemptuous lights flashed flashed across the computer's console.

— Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?" "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus. Mention it not."

— Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and Indefatigable?" "The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought, thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."

— Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola would be a Fortune-500 company. If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95. If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still be using autocoder and running compile decks.

— Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective

To err is human, to moo bovine.

"America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort."

— President John F. Kennedy

"The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so."

— Senator Adlai E. Stevenson

"The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that >from time to time threaten freedoms everyhere... Indeed, it is difficult to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised by the majority they were at the time."

— former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."

— Albert Einstein

"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many men happy."

— Ellyn Mustard, about marriage

"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."

— David Jones @ Megatest Corporation

"Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser."

— Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"

"Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years?"

— Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'"

— Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Don't think; let the machine do it for you!"

— E. C. Berkeley

"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons, insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall."

— Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"

"(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied mathematics, business data handling, or whatever."

— Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_

"It ain't over until it's over."

— Casey Stengel

"If anything can go wrong, it will."

— Edsel Murphy

"Yo baby yo baby yo."

— Eddie Murphy

"You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu. You must learn to tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you can live with it. You must absorb its force and convert it to your users as best you can. Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by understanding it."

— Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_

Everyone who comes in here wants three things: 1. They want it quick. 2. They want it good. 3. They want it cheap. I tell 'em to pick two and call me back.

— sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware

"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined."

— Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_

panic: kernel trap (ignored)

"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."

— Karl Lehenbauer

"Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue."

— Peter Neumann, about usenet

"We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked power. There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation."

— Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart

"What man has done, man can aspire to do."

— Jerry Pournelle, about space flight

"Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit."

— Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban

"If you can, help others. If you can't, at least don't hurt others."

— the Dalai Lama

To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.

"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!"

— Alan Perlis

"...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."

— K. Eric Drexler

"The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he will."

— Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too."

— W. Somerset Maugham

"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."

— Marvin the Paranoid Android

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.

— Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus was the Empire forged.

— Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

"Gort, klaatu nikto barada."

— The Day the Earth Stood Still

"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!"

— Bryan Michael Wendt

"I got a question for ya. Ya got a minute?"

— two programmers passing in the hall

I took a fish head to the movies and I didn't have to pay.

— Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.

What hath Bob wrought?

"I don't know where we come from, Don't know where we're going to, And if all this should have a reason, We would be the last to know. So let's just hope there is a promised land, And until then, ...as best as you can."

— Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"

"Help Mr. Wizard!"

— Tennessee Tuxedo

"The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own."

— H.G. Wells

"Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business."

— John Woods, [email protected]

"Don't talk to me about disclaimers! I invented disclaimers!"

— The Censored Hacker

'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism. Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'

— Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_

"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."

— The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989 [apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson -kl]

"All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally structured thoughts."

— R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitur as far as I can tell. -kl]

"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer terror."

— W. K. Hartmann

"It's when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue."

— Eric Pepke

Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."

— David Guaspari

"None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."

— From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):

"The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..."

— Robert J Woodhead ([email protected])

"...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming."

— Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny

"Irrigation of the land with sewater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'."

— Michael McClary, in alt.fusion

"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."

— Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California

"We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented."

— Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948

"You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."

— Cal Keegan