Memorable Quotations
- Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
- -- Woody Allen
- Sex is dirty only when it's done right.
- -- Woody Allen
- Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
- -- Philip K. Dick
- It's always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not particularly concerned about.
- The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
- All generalizations are bad.
- -- R. H. Grenier
- Dyslexics of the world, untie!
- Whining is anger through a small opening.
- -- Stuart Smalley
- Good students don't "cheat"--they verify.
- It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
- -- Steven Wright
- You can't have everything...where would you put it?
- -- Steven Wright
- I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time." So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
- -- Steven Wright
- I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
- -- Steven Wright
- I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
- -- Steven Wright
- Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
- -- Steven Wright
- It doesn't matter what temperature the room is; it's always room temperature.
- -- Steven Wright
- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
- -- Steven Wright
- I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
- -- Brilliant
- Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.
- If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
- -- Kasspe
- Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
- -- Manly's Maxim
- Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.
- -- Grossman's Misquote
- Only someone who understands something absolutely can explain it so no one else can understand it.
- -- Rudnicki's Nobel Prize Principle
- If you don't understand it, it must be intuitively obvious.
- I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness," but that doesn't work.
- Any time you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong.
- -- Zall's First Law
- How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
- -- Zall's Second Law
- If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
- There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.
- After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.
- -- Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair
- Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner.
- -- Anthony's Law of the Workshop
- Anything dropped in the bathroom falls in the toilet.
- -- Flucard's Corollary
- Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
- -- Russell Baker
- The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
- -- Ehrlich
- If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
- -- Lowery's Law
- There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.
- -- William's Law
- When all else fails, read the instructions.
- -- Cann's Axiom
- When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
- -- Griffin's Thought
- The other line moves faster.
- -- Ettore's Observation
- Proofreading is more effective after publication.
- -- Barker
- Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
- -- Corry
- Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control.
- -- Van Roy's Truism
- If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.
- -- Leonard Levinson
- If you do a job too well, you will get stuck with it.
- -- Slous
- He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.
- -- Nowlan's Theory
- It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- -- Walt Disney
- To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd; to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no one else has seen.
- 98% of all statistics are made up.
- It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
- -- Fletcher Knebel
- There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- -- Benjamin Disraeli
- No matter where you go, there you are.
- -- Buckaroo Bonzai
- In some ways we are more confused than ever, but we feel that we are confused on a higher level and about more important things.
- We're making progress. Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
- Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
- -- Will Rogers
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
- -- Harrison's Postulate
- After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.
- -- Olmstead
- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
- -- Olivier
- The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
- -- Altito
- You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
- Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
- -- Pardo
- Needs are a function of what other people have.
- -- Jone's Principle
- Reach out and grep someone.
- -- Back of an AT&T T-shirt
- I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
- -- Groucho Marx
- I have had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
- -- Groucho Marx
- Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
- -- Mae West
- Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
- -- Ducharme's Precept
- Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it.
- -- Irene Peter
- I'll give you a definite maybe.
- -- Samuel Goldwyn
- Sometimes you can observe a lot by watching.
- -- Yogi Berra
- No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded.
- -- Yogi Berra
- Nothing can be done in one trip.
- -- Snider
- Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
- -- Agnes' Law
- Nothing is as easy as it looks.
- -- Murphy's First Law
- Everything takes longer than you think.
- -- Murphy's Second Law
- Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
- -- Murphy's Third Law
- If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
- -- Murphy's Fourth Law
- If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
- -- Murphy's Fifth Law
- If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
- -- Murphy's Sixth Law
- Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
- -- Murphy's Seventh Law
- After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
- -- Farnsdick's corollary
- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
- -- Murphy's Eighth Law
- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
- -- Murphy's Ninth Law
- Mother Nature is a bitch.
- -- Murphy's Tenth Law
- It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.
- -- Murphy's Eleventh Law
- Murphy was an optimist.
- -- O'Toole's Commentary
- Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
- -- Harvard's Law
- Never replicate a successful experiment.
- -- Fett's Law
- If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
- -- Finagle's First Law
- The real world is a special case.
- -- Horngren's Observation
- Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
- -- von Braun
- It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
- -- Stewart's Law of Retroaction
- It is not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
- -- Phil White
- There are two rules for success...
- 1) Never tell everything you know.
- -- Roger H. Lincoln
- When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.
- -- Merkin's Maxim
- The right hand doesn't know that the left hand has been cut off.
- -- Paul D. Schmitter
- The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
- I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere.
- To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
- -- L. Peter Deutch
- To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
- MS-DOS--Just say "no"
- -- David Yolt
- OS/2...The nightmare continues...
- If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
- -- Woodrow Wilson
- Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bit 'em,
- And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
- And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
- While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
- -- August De Morgan
- Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.
- -- Charles M. Strauss
- "Diplomacy" is letting them have it your way.
- If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
- -- Harry S. Truman
- Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
- -- Albert Einstein
- Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
- -- Albert Einstein
- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
- A dozen, a gross, and a score,
- Plus three times the square root of four,
- Divided by seven,
- Plus nine times eleven,
- Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
- Anything that is designed to do more than one thing can't do any of them well.
- I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- -- Galileo Galileo
- Truth is. Belief is not required.
- -- Gerry Roston
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
- -- Tussman
- Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
Received by way of Nathan Mates (nathan@cco.caltech.edu)
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