Quote of the day
 

It started out as a way to save funny or interesting taglines I saw on bbs messages. I never used taglines much, but I continued to keep a collection as I browsed usenet and got email. I've since added longer quotes that I think are worth keeping around.

I will try to post one every weekday.

'Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.'
- Ogden Nash

Me too! 'cept the post/weekday thang. I could contribute however. What's your pleasure?

The more, the merrier.

As in 100k of collected wisdom? Pacing and restraint are not my long suits. Oh, and expect a special guest appearance of Lazarus Long, more than once! :)

You'll come to regret those words, heh, heh, heh!

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount … The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." - Omar Bradley

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong --
but that's the way to bet." - Damon Runyon

The only request that I have is to emphasize quality over quantity. I think there's a timelessness to a good quote. There's already other places on the board for humor on current events.

I also am a Heinlein fan and I have several of the notebook quotes highlighted in my copy of TEFL. I just never put them in the file because I have them in the book.

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'
- Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland"

It's a trick. Get an axe.~Ash, Army of Darkness

Supernatural or not, Jesus had some good things to say.

marichiko's quote reminded me of this one:

The Things That Will Destroy Us Are:
Politics Without Principle;
Pleasure Without Conscience;
Wealth Without Work;
Knowledge Without Character;
Business Without Morality;
Science Without Humanity;
And Worship Without Sacrifice. -- Mahatma Gandhi - (1869-1948)

*****************

Hearing that President Bush called together former Secreataries of State and Defense, including Colin Powell whose advice he ignored by invading Iraq, I thought of this scene from Alice in Wonderland. Now since the book was disguised political satire, it might be that it was referring to a similar situation in British history.

There are other aphorisms about the need for setting a goal, but none that say it quite as well.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are both great books and full of useful tidbits like this. I find that most programmers have read them - they seem to strike some chord.

Larry Wall (the author of the computer language Perl) in an interview once quoted Humpty Dumpty from Through the Looking Glass - `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' It was both humerous and a wonderful use of the quote to describe a part of the Perl language. However, the text of the interview indicated that the interviewer didn't get it.

I wrote Larry to ask about the interview and actually got a reply. He also is a big fan of the books. He told me that it is no accident that his son is named Charles.

Quote of the Day
 

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately
explained by stupidity" - Hanlon's Razor

"The humble improve."

-Winton Marsalis,
printed on a starbucks cup

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." --Winston Churchill :D

Parallel lines of thought
 

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. -- Phillips Brooks, bishop and orator (1835-1893)

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. -- John F. Kennedy

This is one of my favorite quotes - mainly because I've lived through a few situations in the last few years that proved it to be true:

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
-- George Washington

A reporter interviewing A.J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle, one rainy night asked,"Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" Muste replied, "Oh, I don't do it to change the country, I do it so the country won't change me."

Quote of the Day
 

Sorry for the delay. I've been having muscle spasms in my neck. Way up there on the pain index. So I've been loopy on a couple of medicines.

In any case, here it is:

"If you won't be better tomorrow than you are today,
what need have you for tomorrow?"
R' Nahman of Bratslav

We laugh at honor but are shocked to find traitors in our midst. -- C.S. Lewis

Sad and true, like so many of these bits of wisdom.

"There are only two things I can't stand in this world; People who are intolerant of other people's cultures; and the Dutch."

Nigel Powers - in Goldmember

I like the first one better - the one about the spasms.

December 9, 2005(CNN) While interviewing an anonymous US Special Forces soldier, a Reuters News agent asked the soldier what he felt when sniping members of Al Quaeda in Afghanistan.
The soldier shrugged and replied, "Recoil." :cool:

Quote of the Day
 

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H L Mencken

dar512, that is:

The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. -Thomas Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." -- Muhammed Ali ;)

One to live by --

Wow, great quotes, particularly the R' Nahman one (and the Nigel Powers one :))

One of my favourites:
"Live forever or die trying" - Yosserian, Catch 22

Plus the quote in my signature:

"What wrong can there be in telling a downright good lie for a good cause and the advancement of the Christian Church?" --Martin Luther :eyebrow:

Idle youth
Enslaved by everything,
By being too sensitive
I have wasted my life.
Ah! Let the time come
When hearts are enamoured!
--Arthur Rimbaud

Quote of the Day
 

"Ah! You have made a common mistake here...what you have there is a beet
and you have confused it with food. Food is something like a ham sandwich
or a bowl of chile."
- Paul Hinrichs

Quote of the Day
 

I just ran across this one yesterday while reading "The Pragmatic Programmer":

The greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak.
-- J. B. Bossuet, Politics fomr Holy Writ, 1709

Quote of the Day
 

"By diligent effort I seemed to be prolonging my adolescence into total
absurdity." -- John D. MacDonald - The Empty Copper Sea

"If you have snakes, cover them with a blanket."
- Telugu proverb

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds. -- Samuel Butler

Hope you dont mind me joining in

My first ever post on this board

" We would worry far less what others think of us if we realised how rarely they do "

Good one Mirabelle, I like it, welcome to the Cellar!

Yes, yes, mirabelle. I'll lay that one on my mother. :D

wrt My bad. We're making progress. The words below are my new mantra.

A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron. -Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

Quote of the Day
 

"I was never actually the Devil's Advocate,
but I did do some consulting work for a minor demon."
-- Wolf

"The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers, like stones, at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions." -Paul Tillich

Thank you, Sir! May I have another, Sir!? [/Stripes]

OT


edit: closed the link loop.

"What Me Worry" Alfred E. Newman"

Man will never be free until teh last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. -- Diderot

"fuck you, you fucking fuck" - anon

[quote=BigV]Thank you, Sir! May I have another, Sir!? [/Stripes]

Hmmm, I thought that was from Animal House.
:whip:

I dunno, man, I was really drunk at the time, heheheh, um, yeah.

I'm pretty sure it was Animal House too ... Kevin Bacon, right?

"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud."
- C. G. Jung (Addition to a lecture given to the Society for Psychical Research in 1919) -

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that it must be changed every six months. -- Oscar Wilde

Right

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts.
Einstein

"Sex is like bridge, if you don't have a good partner,
you better have a good hand" ~Mae West

Quote of the Day
 

"Later in this talk, I intend to define the universe and give three examples."
-- Larry Wall (creator of Perl)

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness." ~Bertrand Russell

I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS.
-Robert Bakker, a paleontologist


I just did my taxes for the first time...

We must keep in mind what has been said, that we must trust to this natural light only so long as nothing contrary to it is revealed by God himself...Above all we should impress on our memory as an infallible rule that what God has revealed to us is incomparably more certain than anything else; and that we ought to submit to the Divine authority rather than to our own judgement even though the light of reason may seem to us to suggest, with the utmost clearness and evidence, something opposite. ~ Descartes

Quote of the Day
 

"This calls for a subtle combination of mathematics and explosives."
Unknown