General Wisdom

If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.

If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?

If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was yesterday?

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

— Lyndon Baines Johnson

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

— Laurence J. Peter

"If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely"

"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage."

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.

— Marguerite Emmons

If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?

— Ann Edwards-Duff

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."

— J. Paul Getty

If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.

If you can read this, you're too close.

If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.

If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a call.

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

— Harry S Truman

If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?

If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.

If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.

— Clarence Day

If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.

— Freeman Dyson

"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet."

— Jay Leno

If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day.

"If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to have to get a toehold in the public eye."

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

If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it.

— Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin

"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce"

— Winston Churchill

If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

"If you have to hate, hate gently"

If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior.

— A. J. Liebling

If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.

— Graham Summer

If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred.

— George Burns

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

— Maslow

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

— Mark Twain

If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup.

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.

If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're the sucker.

If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.

If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker, It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock. Or some joker who is slicker, Will trick you of your liquor, If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

— Derek Bok, president of Harvard

If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

— Earl Wilson

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.

— Arthur Kasspe

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

— Richard M. Nixon

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

— Richard Nixon

If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ... If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...

If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.

— "Graffiti in the Big Ten"

"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."

— A. L.

If you want divine justice, die.

— Nick Seldon

If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

— Dorthy Parker

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National".

— George Will

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means."

— Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"

If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

— Henny Youngman

If you're happy, you're successful.

If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you.

— Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.

— Benjamin Disraeli

If you're right 90\% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3\%?

"If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?"

If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.

— Ronald Reagan

Ignisecond, n.: The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Iles's Law: There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

— Jules de Gaultier

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

— Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?"

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.

— Jack Paar

Immortality -- a fate worse than death.

— Edgar A. Shoaff

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"

Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it.

Impossible, adj.: (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve; (2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101\% whaledreck.

— Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"

In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of stairs.

In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.

In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't get parts.

In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.

In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred syrup.

In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the five year period will begin.

In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.

— Frank Mankiewicz

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 Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.

In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.

— Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes.

— Adlai Stevenson

In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency

— The Peter Principle

In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.

"In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir."

— Stuart Keate

In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.

In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.

In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools will be temporarily canceled.

In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and make it better.

In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention.

In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride in any motor vehicle.

"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."

— Winston Curchill, of Montgomery

In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor.

In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks when a concert is on.

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.

— Mark Twain

In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket.

In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while either flying or waiting to board a plane.

In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.

In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

— Carl Sagan, Cosmos

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.

In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view."

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

— Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length.

In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.

— Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.

In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile.

In the beginning was the word. But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax ...

— John Simon

In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he?

In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.

— Egyptian Book of the Dead

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.

— Alan Perlis

In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you.

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

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

In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.

— Art Linkletter

In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take my advice.

— Winston Churchill

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer.

In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.

Incumbent, n.: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.

— Stephen Crane

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?

Individualists unite!

Infancy, n.: The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

— Ambrose Bierce

Information Center, n.: A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.

Ingrate, n.: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

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"

Innovation is hard to schedule.

— Dan Fylstra

Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.

Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.

Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.

INVENTORY Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets.

"Irrationality is the square root of all evil"

— Douglas Hofstadter

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

— Ralph Emerson

Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?

— Kelvin Throop III

Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously?

Issawi's Laws of Progress: The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked, "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so. To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

— Bertrand Russell

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?

— Alan Perlis

It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois.

It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings ...

— Playboy, January 1983

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.

— Voltaire

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted ...

— Douglas Admas "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy"

It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.

— Henry Allen

It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps.

It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark

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

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

— Rod Serling

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased."

— Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task.

— Sydney J. Harris

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.

— Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time.

It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.

— Woody Allen

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.

— Woody Allen

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

— Justice Robert H. Jackson

It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.

It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.

— George Bernard Shaw

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

— Gore Vidal

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?

— Elizabeth Carpenter

It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

— Voltaire

It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their dignity.

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.

— Havelock Ellis

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

— Dijkstra

It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle?

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

— Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"

It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.

It is the business of little minds to shrink.

— Carl Sandburg

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

— Hawkwind

It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.

It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future.

It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.

It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too good either if you speak when your head is empty.

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.

It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the municipality.

— Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."

— Robert Benchly

It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.

"It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot."