General Wisdom

"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's Machineries of Joy?" "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."

— R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"

Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.

Song Title of the Week: "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me."

Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).

Sorry, no fortune this time.

Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

— "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Spare no expense to save money on this one."

— Samuel Goldwyn

Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.

Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy Because he knows it teases. Wow! wow! wow! I speak severely to my boy, And beat him when he sneezes: For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases! Wow! wow! wow!

— Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

Speak roughly to your little VAX, And boot it when it crashes; It knows that one cannot relax Because the paging thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! I speak severely to my VAX, And boot it when it crashes; In spite of all my favorite hacks My jobs it always thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow!

Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.

Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.

— Dave Millman

Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?

Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror: With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair He throws the spinning disk drives in the air! And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds! Helpless users with projects due Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too! Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla! Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!" * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.

— Curtis Jackson

"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."

Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.

Spelling is a lossed art.

Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.

Spirtle, n.: The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye.

— Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.

Stay away from flying saucers today.

Stay away from hurricanes for a while.

"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."

Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming: Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.

Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath ...

Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions.

Stupid, n.: Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.

Sturgeon's Law: 90\% of everything is crud.

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

Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.

Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.

Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ...

(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA) To code the impossible code, To bring up a virgin machine, To pop out of endless recursion, To grok what appears on the screen, To right the unrightable bug, To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To mount the unmountable magtape, To stop the unstoppable crash!

Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!

Surprise due today. Also the rent.

Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.

Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law: Name #

Swahili, n.: The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions.

— Johnny Hart

Sweater, n.: A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.

Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

— Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

System/3! System/3! See how it runs! See how it runs! Its monitor loses so totally! It runs all its programs in RPG! It's made by our favorite monopoly! System/3!

Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.

— Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

T: One big monster, he called TROLL. He don't rock, and he don't roll; Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies. He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.

— The Roguelet's ABC

Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head.

Tact, n.: The unsaid part of what you're thinking.

Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.

Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese

— National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"

Take it easy, we're in a hurry.

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.

— Kipling

Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to improve ...

— Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"

Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy.

— "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

— Euripides

Talkers are no good doers.

— William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20) You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.

Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."

— Russell Long

Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself out of the market.

Taxes, n.: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an extension.

Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

— Aldous Huxley

Telephone, n.: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

— Ambrose Bierce

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me us.

— Ogden Nash

Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.

— R. Geis

"Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

— A. E. Housman

"Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."

— Len Cool, "American Pie"

Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said: "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.

— C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types (Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).

Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.

Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.

"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."

— J. Finnegan, USC.

Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.

— Pogo, by Walt Kelly

"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"

— Foghorn Leghorn

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

That secret you've been guarding, isn't.

That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.

— Dorothy Parker

The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some.

— Dwight MacDonald

The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper

— Thomas Jefferson

The Advertising Agency Song: When your client's hopping mad, Put his picture in the ad. If he still should prove refractory, Add a picture of his factory.

"The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it."

— M. Devine, Computer Science 340

... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.

— Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock.

The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.

— T. Lehrer

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.

— Bill Murray

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

— Abraham Lincoln

The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.

"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, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore

The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking lots.

— Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."

— Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"

The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.

— W. C. Fields

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

— T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"

The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.

— Will Rogers

The bigger the theory the better.

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.

— Merrick Furst

The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public. It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street ...

"The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."

The bogosity meter just pegged.

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 school.

The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.

The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.

— Art Buchwald

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

The camel has a single hump; The dromedary two; Or else the other way around. I'm never sure. Are you?

— Ogden Nash

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

— H. L. Mencken

"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."

— G. Fitch

The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up at the steam fitters' picnic.

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.

— Alfred Adler

The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.

— Russian Proverb

"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere."

"The Computer made me do it."

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

— Alan Perlis

The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his memos.

— New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country.

— John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972

The Consultant's Curse: When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong medicine, and is normally only required once.

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

— Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.

The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.

The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat.

— John McNulty

The Crown is full of it!

— Nate Harris, 1775

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war, then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.

— William Ellery Channing

The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.

The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?

The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.

"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity."

— Benjamin Disraeli

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

— Robert Heinlein

The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

— Gilbert K. Chesterson

The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned it to his master. "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly. "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."

The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm.

— Travis McGee

The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.

The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and add ten percent.

The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.

— Jean-Paul Kauffmann

"The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not Compute' -- I forget which."

— Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

— G. B. Shaw

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men.

— Ambrose Bierce

The fact that it works is immaterial.

— L. Ogborn

The faster we go, the rounder we get.

— The Grateful Dead

The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously.

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

— Abbie Hoffman

The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.

— Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.

— Robert Heller

The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish child, was propounded to me by my father: "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?" I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity gave up. "A herring," said my father. "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!" "So hang it there." "But a herring isn't green!" I protested. "Paint it." "But a herring isn't wet." "If it's just painted it's still wet." "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring doesn't whistle!!" "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard."

— Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"

"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."

— McCloctnik the Lucid

The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet.

— Michael Jackson

The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique!

— Mike Broido, Intermetrics

The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . . . Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube.

The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.

"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."

— Dave Barry

The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the number of your kids by 32 teeth.

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.

The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.

The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled today.

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.

The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice.

The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES The one who has the gold makes the rules.

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell."

— St. Augustine

"The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop") On the good ship Enterprise Every week there's a new surprise Where the Romulans lurk And the Klingons often go berserk. Yes, the good ship Enterprise There's excitement anywhere it flies Where Tribbles play And Nurse Chapel never gets her way. See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge, Mr. Spock is at his side. The weekly menace, ooh-ooh It gets fried, scattered far and wide. It's the good ship Enterprise Heading out where danger lies And you live in dread If you're wearing a shirt that's red.

— Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics

The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.

— Benjamin Franklin.

The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog: The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater.

— Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

— Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

— Albert Einstein

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow.

The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.

The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back, which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at least 5000 years old."

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best".

— H. Allen Smith

"The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and has gills through which it can see."

— Monty Python

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it.

— P. Medawar

The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.

— Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

— Mark Twain

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

— Mark Twain

The idea is to die young as late as possible.

— Ashley Montagu

The idea is to die young as late as possible.

— Ashley Montague

The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers, where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"

— Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"

"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."

— Franco Spisani

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."

— Henry Kissinger

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

— Will Rogers

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.

— Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King

The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

— Adam Walinsky

The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.

The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...

— Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

The Killer Ducks are coming!!!

The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints ... So far, I've had no complaints.

— Dorothy Parker

"The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about drugs.'

— Roy Blount, Jr.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

"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

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said to be useful in protheththing lithtth.

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.