Quotes


	Favorite Quotes

"Windows 95/98/Me is 32-bit extensions and graphical shell on top of a 16-bit hack of an 8-bit operating system originally written for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

--orig. author unknown

"You interact with a computer differently when you can trust it to be reliable."

--from a blog comment, 2007-07

"People aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be."

--Pamela (PJ) Jones, May 2007

"Fat operating systems spend most of their energy supporting their own fat."

--Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab, rediff.com, Apr 2006

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep one in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

--Herbert Spencer (attrib)

"But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."

--Arthur Conan Doyle as Sherlock Holmes

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

--Lord Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet

"And for the support of this Declaration,...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

--Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"To place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent."

--Thomas Jefferson (attrib) on the reason for The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"Sum ergo cogito."

--Ayn Rand, paraphrased

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak and remove all doubt."

--author unclear

"Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

--Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé, October 5, 1877

"Dum spiro, spero" ("Where there's life, there's hope," or literally "While I breathe, I hope")

--State Motto South Carolina

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

--RAH as Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.

--Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"

"All men dream...but not equally. They who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it is vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

--T. E. Lawrence (via Harlan Ellison)

"For those who understand no explanation is necessary. For those who don't none is possible."

--My Intro to Philosophy instructor at UNC/Fayetteville State, orig. author unknown.

"I am the master of my unspoken words, and slave to those which should have remained unsaid."

--author unknown, kitchen magnet

"Well, it's either Captain Kirk or Doctor Strangelove."

--me, ca 1984-1985

"It's amazing that after 3000 years of Western Philosophy it all comes down to a quote from Dirty Harry, 'A man's got to know his limitations'."

--me, ca 1992-1994

"The only good thing about not being in a relationship is it means having to cut your toenails less often."

--me, 1995

"Cosmetic: A bug that will only affect the end user."

--me, March 2007

Update: 2005.002

Favorite Quotes