General Wisdom

BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)

Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face.

— National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.

— Mark Twain

Be different: conform.

Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so get used to it.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss

— Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Bees are very busy souls They have no time for birth controls And that is why in times like these There are so many Sons of Bees.

Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing. "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?" Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.) Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.

— Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"

Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.

Begathon, n.: A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so you won't have to watch commercials.

Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.

Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better looking and richer male friend.

"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>

"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>

Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: (1) Houses are for people to live in. (2) Gardens are for plants to live in. (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.

"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"

— Time Bandits

Besides the device, the box should contain: * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING" * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns. YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable. IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's why." WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.

— Dave Barry, "Read This First!"

Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.

better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus <north pole >town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus <north pole > town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | egrep 'bad|good' for (goodness sake) { be good }

Better dead than mellow.

Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word. It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party. It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us.

— The Realist, November, 1964.

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

— Donald Knuth

Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!

Beware of low-flying butterflies.

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.

— Leonard Brandwein

Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

— Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"

Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.

Binary, adj.: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.

"Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division."

Bipolar, adj.: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo, New York

Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic

Bizoos, n.: The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a basketball.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.

BLISS is ignorance

Blood flows down one leg and up the other.

Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.

Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.

Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept throwing up on them.

Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.

Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!

Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.

Bore, n.: A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.

— Walter Winchell

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Boren's Laws: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.

Boss, n.: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud."

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.

— O. W. Holmes

Boston, n.: Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for finishing second in the Irish jig competition.

"Boy, life takes a long time to live

— Steven Wright

Boy, n.: A noise with dirt on it.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

— James Thurber

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

— Kin Hubbard

Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'

— Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style"

Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"

Brain, n.: The apparatus with which we think that we think.

— 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"

Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.

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

Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon.

British Israelites: The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.

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

Broad-mindedness, n.: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.

Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when this occurs, they are an endangered species.

— Thomas K. Connellan

Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Bubble Memory, n.: A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".

Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.

— Ray Simard

Bugs, pl. n.: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls.

BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit." GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?" BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive..."

— Jay Ward

Bumper sticker: "All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture"

Bureaucrat, n.: A person who cuts red tape sideways.

— J. McCabe

Bureaucrat, n.: A politician who has tenure.

Burn's Hog Weighing Method: (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank. (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.

— Robert Burns

... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"But I don't like Spam!!!!"

... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

— S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"

But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.

— Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"

"But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast to the nearest gas station."

But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.

— Hilaire Belloc

But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go!

— Mark "The Bard" Twain

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.

— Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I explained yet about the bytes?"

... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.

— Virginia Masters

"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?"

Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn; Less dear than army ants in apple pies Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn, Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit; Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose They suck, and like the double-breasted suit Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose, Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed; And stem the produce of thy waspish wits: Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed; Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits. Be off, I say; go bug somebody new, Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.

By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task completely overwhelm you.

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)"

— Quoted from a fortune cookie program (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You thin

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

— Gary Larson, "The Far Side"

By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I mean.

— Mark Twain

C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.

— Ray Simard

Cabbage, n.: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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

— The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989

Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.

California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.

— Fred Allen

California, n.: From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."

— Ed Moran

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.

— Indian proverb

"Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."

"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."

— Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont."

— Clarence Darrow

Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points.

— M. M. Johnston

Canada Bill Jone's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces.

Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.

— Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

— Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

CANCER (June 21 - July 22) You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare recipients are Cancer people.

Canonical, adj.: The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."

CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19) You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as they take root and become trees.

Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes.

Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and trousers that don't match.

Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Cat, n.: Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.

Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.

— Mark Twain

Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.

CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..

Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.

Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.

— Kelvin Throop III

Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?

Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel. Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy out of it? Jaka: Ugh! Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?

— Cerebus #6, "The Secret"

Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny-- Did you ever try buying them without money?

— Ogden Nash

Chapter 1 The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Character Density, n.: The number of very weird people in the office.

Checkuary, n.: The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his checks.

Chef, n.: Any cook who swears in French.

Chemicals, n.: Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.

Chemistry is applied theology.

— Augustus Stanley Owsley III

Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.

Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36: Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".

— Chicago Reader 3/27/81

Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84: The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will cheerfully baste you.

— Chicago Reader 5/28/82

Chicago, n.: Where the dead still vote ... early and often!

Chicken Little only has to be right once.

Chicken Little was right.

Chicken Soup, n.: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.

— Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.

— Franklin P. Jones

Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.

— Ogden Nash

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.

Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.

Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.

Chivalry, Schmivalry! Roger the thief has a method he uses for sneaky attacks: Folks who are reading are Characteristically Always Forgetting to Guard their own bac ...

Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.

Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Cigarette, n.: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in between.

Cinemuck, n.: The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which covers the floors of movie theaters.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.

— Ambrose Bierce

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

— Phyllis Diller

Cleanliness is next to impossible.

"Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day."

Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

— Mark Twain

COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."

— Blair Houghton

Coincidence, n.: You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

— G. K. Chesterton

Cold, adj.: When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.

Cold, adj.: When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own pockets.

Collaboration, n.: A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the other fellow can spell.

College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.

— H. L. Mencken

Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50\%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to. Grelb's Commentary Likelihoods, however, are 90\% against you.

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

— Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.

COMMENT Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.

— Dorothy Parker

Commitment, n.: Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.

Committee, n.: A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

— Fred Allen

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

— Clive James

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.

— Josh Billings

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

— Albert Einstein

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

Computer programmers do it byte by byte

Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.

Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

— Pablo Picasso

Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.

Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more than the estimate the job will cost.

Conceit causes more conversation than wit.

— LaRouchefoucauld

Concept, n.: Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than $25,000.

Condense soup, not books!

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.

— Peter de Vries

Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.

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!"

Connector Conspiracy, n: [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

— H. L. Mencken

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking

— H. L. Mencken

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren't.

"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."

— "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]

Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them.

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"

— Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"

"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Corrupt, adj.: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.