Stormtiger

Gaming

Everything else

Bob's Page

Home

Bob's Page

Quotes

Unfiled

I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
-- Detronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.

Prayer in school is to religion as a spelling bee is to education; it's nothing but a stunt.
-- Rev. Orson Scott Card, first minister of the Secular Humanist religion.

If it's strong enough to do any good than it'll do harm, and if it's weak enough not to do harm, then it can't possibly do any good.
-- Rev. Orson Scott Card, first minister of the Secular Humanist religion.

It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.
-- Franklin P. Jones

For why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience?
-- Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:20

Levi-Strauss has said that (totemic animals) are good to think with. I feel the same about sexual writing: sex is good to think with. Although it goes against the current of Freudian thought, we seem to be stuck with in this century, I dont believe that anything is ABOUT SEX, but that sex is ABOUT something. It is, if you like a metaphor, for how we are as human beings in the social world. So writing about people doing sex, having sexual encounters is a way of discussing something else about individuals and their relations with others. Its as if sex were a childs playground, an available space we all use both for pleasure, and for working out our obsessions, fears and desires. Sexual desire and its fulfillment is, of course, pleasure, but I dont believe its only that. At least I hope not because it wouldnt be nearly as interesting to write about....
-- Jenny Diski, Author's note from Slow Hand: An Anthology of Women Writing Erotica

Nostalgia can generally be defined as a state of inarticulate contempt for the present and fear of the future, in concert with a yearning for order, constancy, safety, and community -- qualities that were last enjoyed in childhood and are retroactively imagined as gracing the whole of the time before one's birth.
-- Luc Sante, from Low life

In recent years, scriptwriters and studios have increasingly neglected story, opting instead to boost sagging plot lines with the indicia of reality -- from the ever-more anatomically correct dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park" and "Lost World," to the computer-enhanced tornadoes of "Twister." The aim is to divert our attention away from deficiencies of plot and character, targeting instead a kind of ersatz credibility achieved through special effects or the bald importation of elements from the real world.
-- Ted Gup from When worlds dissolve, published in Salon Magazine

'Cause it will probably be the one you least expect to, who will wage on through your storm with you, who will give your fears respect. Who will melt your burden down, although you probably don't want that yet.

Still, the odds fall sweet in favor to an open heart.

But what can just one of us do?
Against all that money and power
Trying to crush us into roaches?
We can start by not lying so much
And treating other people like dirt
It's easy not to base our lives
On how much we can scam
And you know
It feels good to lift that monkey off our backs.
-- Dead Kennedys, from their song "Stars and Stripes of Corruption"

In Silicon Valley, bankuptcy is treated like a deuling scar in a Prussian officer's mess.
-- Unnamed European from the British magazine the Econimist, 2Q97

A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Ghandi

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

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else.
-- Ida Tarbell

A war is never foreign.
-- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Seems like nothing draws men together like killing other men.
-- Susan Glaspell

In all the great sieges, the defenders eat rats, and if I have to eat rats, they are going to be well spiced!
-- Lee Miller (after buying a basket of spices from a London shopkeeper just before the Blitz, 1940)

The Official MBA Handbook on business cards: Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate Planning."

I'm high all right! But not on false drugs! I'm high on the real thing! A clean windshield, powerful gasoline, and a shoeshine. Over...

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
-- Bertrand Russell

Religion is the opiate of the masses, and the heart in a heartless land.
-- Karl Marx

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.
-- Alexander Tytler

Back in the good old days of gaming, there were no rules -- only a referee with a gun and a chair.
-- David L. Arneson

Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.
-- Archibald Macleish

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre

After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas

First they came for the fourth amendment, But I said nothing since I wasn't a drug dealer. Then they came for the sixth amendment, but I kept quiet since I knew I wasn't guilty. Finally they came for the first amendment, and by then it was too late to say anything at all.
-- Mark Eckenwiler

Men aren't allowed to cry or show feeling so therefore we must belch and fart or we will blow up.
-- Socrates, 3 A.D.

Baldrick, you wouldn't see a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing 'Subtle Plans Are Here Again'.
-- Black Adder

Revolution: It's not just for leftists anymore.
-- Clayton Cramer

Governments that don't trust most people with weapons, deserve no trust.
-- Clayton Cramer

Slave + Firearm = Free Man
-- Clayton Cramer

Anyone who wants to be a politician bad enough to get elected, shouldn't be.
-- Clayton Cramer

Alcohol prohibition didn't work; drug prohibition doesn't work; gun prohibition won't work.
-- Clayton Cramer

Sad but true: the three most powerful emotions are greed, fear, and hatred.
-- Clayton Cramer

The Bill of Rights: an innocent bystander in the War on Drugs & Guns.
-- Clayton Cramer

Abandon all hopes of utopia -- there are people involved.
-- Clayton Cramer

Assault rifle possession is a victimless crime.
-- Clayton Cramer

"This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?"
Can I have a Brain McMuffin?
-- Clayton Cramer

Tiananmen Square: Gun Control Strikes Again.
-- Clayton Cramer

A pacifist who calls the police isn't one; hired violence is still violence.
-- Clayton Cramer

Democracy, minority rights: pick one.
-- Clayton Cramer

Deng Xiaoping: why every home needs a rifle.
-- Clayton Cramer

William Bennett: The best argument yet against philosopher-kings.
-- Clayton Cramer

"No man is an island" is the beginning of the end of personal freedom.
-- Clayton Cramer

What shall it be today? Watch Three's Company? Or unify the field theory?
-- Clayton Cramer

Human rights are non-negotiable -- respect the Bill of Rights, or you'll soon find out why the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.
-- Clayton Cramer

My definition of social justice: those who refuse to work deserve to go hungry.
-- Clayton Cramer

California: 3 years in prison for mayhem; 4 years for sale of an assault rifle. Aren't liberals amazing?
-- Clayton Cramer

There is no moral obligation to obey unjust and stupid laws.
-- Clayton Cramer

The government is armed & dangerous; the people must be at least as well armed.
-- Clayton Cramer

Democracy is freedom only when the majority are tolerant -- which is never.
-- Clayton Cramer

No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
-- Clayton Cramer

Politicians prefer unarmed peasants. Ask the Lithuanians.
-- Clayton Cramer

Gun control: the assumption that everyone is a criminal.
-- Clayton Cramer

Amtrak subsidies: adults playing with choo-choos.
-- Clayton Cramer

Liberal: Someone who votes for Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson to show his hatred of racism.
-- Clayton Cramer

If "right of the people" in the Second Amendment doesn't refer to an individual right, what does it refer to in the First & Fourth Amendments?
-- Clayton Cramer

Crime control, Los Angeles style: mandatory Rolex registration, five day waiting period for used Rolex sales.
-- Clayton Cramer

A concealed weapons permit is a permit to effectively defend yourself from armed criminals. Why do you think they're so hard to get?
-- Clayton Cramer

"Meat is murder!" "Dairy is rape!" -- Animal Liberation Front

Fine, then antibiotics are genocide!
-- Clayton Cramer

Self-defense is the most basic of human rights. Lacking the right to defend yourself today can make it very hard to exercise any other rights tomorrow.
-- Clayton Cramer

Gun Control: The belief that the government, with its great wisdom and moral superiority, can be trusted with a monopoly on deadly force.
-- Clayton Cramer

"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*."
-- a moral relativist with whom I work.

Fabian socialism crossed with wealth gives the current system: Fabian fascism.
-- Clayton Cramer

Self-defense is a basic human right; dead people seldom exercise any others.
-- Clayton Cramer

They can have my urine sample when they pry it from my dead, cold fingers.
-- Clayton Cramer

Those who will not discipline themselves frequently have discipline thrust upon them.
-- Clayton Cramer

One of the great absurdities of history: that a group whose sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility about STDs turned AIDS from an unknown disease into the most publicized disease of our time, blames straight society for it.
-- Clayton Cramer

We preserve our freedoms through three boxes: ballot, jury, and cartridge.
-- Clayton Cramer

Congressional corruption: a renewable resource.
-- Clayton Cramer

The Physician Assisted Death Initiative failed. Term limits for Congressmen passed. If only we could have combined the two... two terms, and a doctor does lethal injection...
-- Clayton Cramer

Racism is "class struggle" applied to ethnicity.
-- Clayton Cramer

We could say that Congress spends money like drunken sailors. But that would be unfair -- to the sailors. They, at least, are spending their own money.
-- Clayton Cramer

C++ is to C, as lung cancer is to lung.
-- Clayton Cramer

The American political system is so corrupted by special interest power that it is beyond repair.
-- Clayton Cramer

Janet Reno, wants to protect us from violent television shows. She can start by promising no more Wacos to broadcast.
-- Clayton Cramer

What do you mean I can't take a leave of absence to overthrow the government? What sort of cheap-skate company is this?
-- Clayton Cramer

Christophobia: the irrational fear of Christianity, and the moral system that it promotes. Usage: "You can't be serious! Anyone that thinks that way is just a 'Christophobe!' There's no point in considering what they say!"
-- Clayton Cramer

The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike. It is its natural manure.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Power still comes from guns
-- Newsweek, 01/08/90, p. 25.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Our Constitution is color-blind. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race... is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with civil freedom.
-- Justice John Marshall Harlan (1896)

Inflatable sheep now available.

From sign in San Francisco adolescent book store window. Where is the Animal Liberation Front when you need them?
-- Clayton Cramer

Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion.
-- from New Hampshire's request for a Bill of Rights, 1788.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke, _Parliament_of_Whores_

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
-- a Dead White Male

Dan Quayle says I'm not qualified to be President. How would he know?
-- Pat Buchanan, 02/26/92

Foxes prefer rabbits with short claws.
-- Nadja Adolf

When freedom destroys order, order will destroy freedom.
-- Eric Hoffer

Who's going to catch us? We're the police. We're in charge.
-- Former NYC police officer, explaining to a commission why he wasn't afraid while committing robbery, aggravated assault, rape, and burglary in uniform.

If life were fair, the acquisition of a large bosom or a massive inheritance would have no bearing on your ability to attract the opposite sex, and Dan Quayle would be making a living asking runny-nosed children, `Do you want fries with that?'
-- John Cleese, "Corporate Computing" magazine

"Son, I just want you to know: life is a black, sucking, vortex of anguish and dispair, filled with brief moments of false hope and empty joy, all the while dragging you inevitably closer to final, absolute, and eternal death."

"Thanks, Dad."

25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, 4 out of 5 US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?
-- Andrew Ford

Britannus (shocked): Caesar, this is not proper.
Theodotus (outraged): How?
Caesar (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
-- "Caesar and Cleopatra", act II, by George Bernard Shaw

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell "Marriage and Morals" (1929)

In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late.
-- Bruce Sterling - LA Times 2/20/92

The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little pratice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
-- Calvin, from "Calvin & Hobbes"

Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. . . . I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy.
-- J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds

Suppose that you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
-- Socrates

I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care. Or indeed why it should be necessary to prove it at all.
-- Avon (to Vila) from Blakes 7

1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.
-- Adolf Hitler

Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. -- gene spafford, 1992

And since human beings have for all practical purposes no wolfish social skills, the wolf regards the human being as a wild animal, and the wolf is correct. He doesen't trust us, with perfectly good reason.
-- V. Hearne (Adam's Task)

Even the AI hated [my book]?

The AI *loved* it. That's when we knew for sure that *people* were going to hate it." -- Dan Simmons, from Hyperion

The gods are too fond of a joke.
-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East, - to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them, - who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.
-- H. Thoreau. Walden

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
-- H. Thoreau. Walden

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but, boys, it is all hell.
-- General William T. Sherman, at a speech at Columbus, Ohio, August 11, 1880, before G.A.R. veterans, reprinted and condensed to "War Is Hell," The Ohio State Journal, August 12, 1880.

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.
-- Otto von Bismarck, 1850

It is magnificent, but it is not war.
-- General Pierre Bosquet, on the Charge of the Light Brigade.

War, war is still the cry, 'War even to the knife!'
Byron

Veni, vidi, vici.
-- Julius Caesar, after the defeat of Pharaneces, at Zela in Pontus, 47 BC.

An army abroad is of little use unless there are pruden counsels at home.
-- Cicero

Ares hates those who hesitate.
-- Euripides, 'Heraclidae.'

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 'Letter to Quincy,' September 11, 1773.

An attitude not only of defence, but defiance.
-- Thomas Gillespie, 'The Mountain Storm.'

We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.
-- Guicciardini, 'Storia d'Italia.'

Let the only walls the foe shall scale be ramparts of the dead.
-- Paul H. Hayne, 'Vicksburg.'

My men never retire. They go forward or they die.
-- Colonel William Hayward, to a French General who cried to him to retire his troops, the 369th Infantry (Colored), c. WW I.

I war not with the dead.
-- Homer, 'Iliad.'

The chance of war is equal, and the slayer oft is slain.
-- Homer, 'Iliad.'

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle far off.
-- Job. XXXIX. 25.

The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.
-- Judges. XVI. 9.

The people arose as one man.
-- Judges. XX. 8.

There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.
-- Bonar Law, from a speech prior to WW I.

To arms! to arms! ye brave!
        Th' avenging sword unsheathe,
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
        On victory or death!
         -- Joseph Touget de Lisle, 'The Marseilles Hymn,' 7th Stanza by DuBois.

Ultima ratio regum.
(Translation: Last arguement of Kings)
Commonly inscribed on cannons during the Napoleonic era.

Hence it happened that all the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed perished.
-- Machiavelli, 'Il Principe.'

'Tis a principle of war that when you can use the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.
-- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Providence is always on the side of the last reserve.
-- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Ils ne passeront pas.
(Translation: They shall not pass.)
-- General Petain, 1916.

It is the province of kings to bring wars about; it is the province of God to end them.
-- Cardinal Pole, to Henry VIII.

War, the needy bankrupt's last resort.
-- Rowe, 'Pharsalia,' Bk. I. 343.

It was a slaughter rather than a battle.
-- Schiller, 'Die Jungfrau von Orleans,' I. 9. 50.

There are few die well that die in battle.
-- Henry V. Act IV. Sc. I.

Fight the good fight of faith.
-- I Timothy. VI. 12.

It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
-- Voltaire, 'Letter to M. le Riche,' February 6, 1770.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
-- George Washington, 'Letter to John Banister,' Valley Forge, April 21, 1778.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.
-- The Duke of Wellington, in a despatch in 1815.

Uncommon Valor was a common virtue.
-- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima, 1945.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.
-- Major George S. Patton, 'The Cavalry Journal,' September, 1933.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
-- General George S. Patton.

We shall bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces.
-- Henry V. Act I. Sc. 2.

A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.
-- General George S. Patton.

In war there is no second prize for the runner up.
-- General of the Army Omar Bradley.

Only one military organization can hold and gain ground in war -- a ground army supported by tactical aviation with supply lines guarded by the navy.
-- General of the Army Omar Bradley.

Armament is an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor. Man, not material, forms the decisive factor.
-- Mao Tse Tung, 1938.

War cannot be divorced from politics for a single moment.
-- Ma Tse Tung, 1938.

An army marches on its stomach.
-- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Every...soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack.
-- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

I have seen war...I hate war.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936.

War is a contagion.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 11, 1941.

Yesterday, December 7th, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air frces of the Empire of Japan.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941.

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 13, 1945.

My adversaries...applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason; terror and force.
-- Adolf Hitler, 'Mein Kampf.'

Strength lies not in the defense but in attack.
-- Adolf Hitler, 'Mein Kampf.'

Whomsoever England allies herself with, she will see her allies stronger than she is herself at the end of this war.
-- Adolf Hitler, 'Speech to the Reichstag,' April 26, 1942.

Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.
-- Pyrrhus, from Plutarch.

The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
-- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Chapter I: Laying Plans

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to saftey or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected.

Chapter I: Laying Plans

All warfare is based upon deception. Hence, when able to attack we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive when we are near we must seem far away; when far away we must make him believe that we are near.

Chapter II: On Waging War

Thus, though we have heard of the stupid haste of war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays. In all history there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare

Chapter III: The Sheathed Sword

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking your enemys resistance without fighting.

Chapter III: The Sheathed Sword

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succomb in every battle.

Chapter IV: Tactics

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possiblity of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

Chapter IV: Tactics

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity to defeat the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

Chapter IV: Tactics

The mark of excellence is not if you fight and conquer and the whole empire says "Well Done" True excellence is to plan secretly, to move surreptitiously, to foil the enemys intentions and balk at his schemes, so that the day may be won without shedding a drop of blood.

Chapter V: Energy

The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent that will even roll stones along it course.

Chapter V: Energy

Amid the turmoil of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid the confusion and chaos your array may be without jead or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat [for] simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; Simulated fear postultes courage; Simulted weakness postulates strength.

Chapeter VI: Weak points and Strong

If the enemy is taking his ease, harass him; if quietly encamped, force him to move; if well supplied with food, starve him out. Appear at points that the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to the places where you are not expected.

Chapter VIII

There are armies that must not be attacked, positions that must not be contested, commands of the soverighn that must not be obeyed

Chapter X: Terrian

Regard your soldiers as your children, and the will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death. If however you are indulgent, but unable to make your authority felt, (part deleted) then your soldiers will be likened to spoiled children; they are useless for any practical purpose.

Chapter XI: The Nine Situations

Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve.

Chapter XI: The Nine Situations

Prohibit the taking of omens, and do way with superstious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.

Chapter XIII: The Use Of Spies

Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory that is decided in a sigle day. This being so, to remian in ignorance of the enemys condition, simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of sivler in honors and emoluments is the hight of inhumanity

We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
-- Eric Hoffer

In defense, you hush your voices and obliterate your tracks, hidden as ghosts and spirits beneath the earth, invisible to anyone. On the attack, your movement is swift and your cry shattering, fast as thunder and lightning, as though coming from the sky, impossible to prepare for.
-- Du Mu, commentaries on _The Art of War_

I would like the public to know that I am a poet first and a would-be assassin last.
-- John W. Hinckley, Jr.

The only way to understand what mathematics mean by infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
-- Voltaire

Never blame on malice that which can be fully explained by stupidity.
-- Hanlon

It's a shame that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.
-- Jack Handey

Militarism is a characteristic, not of an army, but of a society.
-- R.H. Tawney

Human war has been the most successful of all our cultural traditions.
-- Robert Ardrey

A man who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. . . Men court war to escape meaningless and boredom, to be relieved of fear and frustration.
-- Nels F.S. Ferre

Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible.
-- William James

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war their finest qualities.
-- John Foster Dulles

I dropped an aerial torpedo right in the center, and the group opened up like a flowering rose. It was most entertaining.
-- Vittorio Mussolini

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx

Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield.
-- General Walter Bedell Smith

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
-- Winston Churchill

Therefore measure in terms of five things, use these assessments to make comparisons, and then find out what the conditions are. The five things are the way, the weather, the terrain, the leadership, and discipline.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

The weather means the seasons.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

The terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel, dimension, and safety.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

Discipline means organization, chain of command, and logistics.
-- Sun Tzu (Thomas Cleary translation)

Fraternities and Sororities serve a useful purpose. If it was required that those types of people wear garishly colored sweaters with huge runic warning symbols that normal folks could see for hundreds of yards, they wouldn't touch 'em with a ten foot pole.
-- Bob Simpson

Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices -- wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr, _The Mythical Man-Month_

It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.
-- The Generals

Of course not: that's our job.
Love,
the Infantry

Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances, lest thou commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug and thy wife be frustrated and have no further use for thee except thy wages.
-- Commandment IX: Ten Commandments of Electrical/Electronic Safety

A means of control should exist whereby access operators and their organizations are held responsible for what is posted on the Internet,
-- Church of Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin

If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. `Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting.
-- Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich on the de-funding of the Public Broadcasting System, as quoted by _Broadcasting_and_Cable_, Feb. 20, 1995, p. 8

The Internet is a conduit of criminal activity.
-- James P. Lennane, president of software company DeScribe Inc., who in Oct. 1994 offered a ,000 reward for the turning in of certain software pirates, whom Microsoft also offered a ,000 bounty on.

Networks are based on choice. When they get uncomfortable, it's easy to opt out of them. Communities teach tolerance, co-existence, and mutual respect...I fear that calling a network a community leads people to complacency and delusion, to accepting an inadequate substitute because they've never experienced the real thing and they don't know what they're missing.
-- Eric Utne, publisher of _Utne_Reader_, from _Utne_Reader_, Mar.-Apr. 1995, p. 3

If I knew what you've made during the year, if I know what your withholding is, if I know what your spending pattern is, I should be able to generate for you a tax return. I am an excellent advocate of return-free filing. We know everything about you that we need to know. Your employer tells us everything about you that we need to know. Your activity records on your credit cards tell us everything about you that we need to know. Through interface with Social Security, with the DMV, with your banking institutions, we really have a lot of information ... We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we'd like to go to.
-- US Internal Revenue Service Document Processing System project manager, as reported by _Wired_, Dec. 1994, p. 174.

I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation.
-- Founder of ClariNet Communications Corp., _Internet_World_, Nov/Dec. 1994, p.64)

E-mail someday will unite us all in a shared state of epistolary bliss. E-mail is ethereal; it consumes no paper, no ink, and only a misting of fossil fuels. E-mail is nearly instantaneous. Best of all, e-mail combines the vacuity of phone talk with the potential permanence of letters. A fledgling still, e-mail promises to burgeon beyond anyone's calculation. Maybe the letter's golden age isn't dead after all; it may be yet to come.
-- an op-ed piece in the Nov. 9, 1994 _Wall_Street_Journal_

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
-- Seneca, 65 CE

Nothing we do in this great capital can change the fact that factories or information can flash across the world, that people can move money around in the blink of an eye...Nothing can change the fact that technology can be adopted, once created, by people all across the world and then rapidly adapted in new and different ways by people who have a little different take on the way that technology works.
-- William Clinton, President of the United States, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 [Note how inconsistent this statement is with the Clinton Administration's policy efforts to stuff the encryption genie back in the bottle.]

The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, _Historical_Review_of_Pennsylvania_, 1759.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-- Lily Tomlin

Any vagabond babbler or unacknowledged genius, any enterprising tradesman, with his own money or with the money of others, may found a newspaper, even a great newspaper. He may attract a host of writers, ready to deliver judgment on any subject at a moment's notice; he may hire illiterate reporters to keep him supplied with rumors and scandals. His staff is then complete. From that day he sits in judgement on all the world, on ministers and administrators, on literature and art, on finance and industry.
-- K.P. Pobyedonostseff, _Reflections_of_a_Russian_Statesman_ (tr. Robert Long)

If you think the 13,000 guys at Microsoft who aren't millionaires yet are going to show some restraint, you're in for a surprise.
-- Andy Nicholson of Microsoft, in response to America On-Line CEO Steve Case's comment that Microsoft should show some restraint in the online market.

If I have a market in the U.S., I have 200 to 250 million guys all speaking the same language, all paying in dollars, and all reading the same magazines. The natural hub of the industry is the United States. Whether the Japanese or the Europeans like to hear this or not, it's the truth.
-- Expatriate Belgian CEO of TechGnosis, a software company now based in the US.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a First Amendment right to speak in a encrypted way...The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand.
-- Eben Moglen, Columbia U. professor of law and legal history, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Cyberspace still exists at the pleasure of the real world.
-- Esther Dyson, EFF Boardmember, from Jan. 14. 1994 _Economist_ article

Grassroots can grow through concrete.
-- Jim DePoe , as quoted in Jim Warren's _GovAccess_ e-newsletter.

Philosophical habits of mind do not come quicker through fiber optics. Clear thinking is not aided by better dot resolution. Understanding ourselves and feeling for others does not come with a software upgrade.
-- Linda Ray Pratt

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-- Alexander Graham Bell

[R]espondents [to an Internet survey] reported a more active civic life in cyberspace than is typically reported by respondents in the national election studies (NES) of Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan. Even though the technology is new, close to one-third had used e-mail to contact a public official. This compares to an estimated 28 percent of the NES who reported ever having written a letter to a public official during the 1960 and 70s...About 60 percent had been asked to petition or otherwise contact a public official about an issue or public policy.
-- Bonnie Fisher, Michael Margolis, David Resnick, "Democracy on the Internet" Survey Results, as presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York City, Sept. 1-4, 1994

Knowledge of history is the precondition of political intelligence. Without history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been [or] what it core values are. - 'National Standards for United States History' as reprinted in _Time_, Nov. 7, 1994

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
-- Barry Goldwater

When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping...Jay Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities in which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common sense, will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand, in detail, the whole system, and for very large systems you can't do this without a very large computer. Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands, but not to touch...Intervening is a way of causing trouble.
-- Lewis Thomas, from the essay "On Meddling", _The_Medusa_and_the_Snail_, Viking Pr., New York, 1979

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my freind, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
-- E. M. Forster

In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it.
-- Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", _TIME_, Mar. 14 1994 [note: these statistics have since been called into question. Even so, they are unlikely to be off by very MUCH...]

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
-- George Carlin.

Puritanism--The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself
-- Thomas Paine

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.
-- Orson Welles

In order to keep up with the criminals and to protect our national security, the solution is clear: we need legislation to ensure that telephone companies and other carriers provide law enforcement with access to this new technology.
-- FBI Dir. Louis Freeh, 08Dec93 speech to the DC Press Club

Stop that Pinky, or I shall have to Hurt you.
-- the Brain

First they came for the fourth amendment, but I said nothing since I wasn't a drug dealer. Then they came for the sixth amendment, but I kept quiet since I knew I wasn't guilty. Finally they came for the first amendment, and by then it was too late to say anything at all.
-- Mark Eckenwiler [MJKimball@pop.com]

Men aren't allowed to cry or show feeling so therefore we must belch and fart or we will blow up.
-- Socrates 3 A.D.

I don't want to be in some sort of cyberspace, hypervirtual bloody reality ... I mean what kind of a reality is that, you know? With a thirteen amp plug on the end of it?
-- Eddie =AbFab=

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...
-- Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A)

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the Universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
-- Georg Santayana

Many years ago I would go around on the street and say things like "Narn", "Mimbari", and "Centauri" and get only crazy looks. Now people might actually get a different reaction. It's like Babylon 5 is a carrier of some terrible disease which transfers all these things from my head to yours.

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"

Politicians in government should be changed regularly, like diapers, for the same reason.

Our society has embraced the bloodthirstiness of trial law like no other. In a courtroom, one can reap the benefits of total war without the bloodshed. You can destroy another's freedom, their ability to earn money, retain property, or keep their families. A Court Order to have one's fields sown with salt doesn't seem that far fetched to me.
-- Scott Ruggels

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.
-- Citizen G'Kar

The first measure of a free society is *not* that it's government performs the will of the majority. We had that in 1930s Germany and in the South until the '60s. The first measure of a free society is that its government protects the just freedoms of its minorities. The majority is quite capable of protecting itself.
-- Jim Warren, stated often beginning around the mid-1980s

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge and Chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremburg.

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is in the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.
-- Maxims of Ptah Hotep

We keep making the mistake in this country of thinking about politics as a spectrum that runs from right to left. It's not. It's a scale that runs from top to bottom. And the only real questions are: Who's getting screwed and who's doing the screwing?
-- Molly Ivins, "America's wisest and funniest political columnist"

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
-- Popular Mechanics 1949, forecasting the relentless march of science

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
-- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett- Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his personal computer.

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

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage

Knowledge is *not* Power: Power is but *one* attribute of Knowledge.
-- D. Mitchell

The White House was as mysterious as a ghost ship; you heard the creak of the rigging and the groan of the timbers and sometimes even glimpsed the crew on the deck. But which of the crew had the helm?... It was impossible to know for sure.
-- Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig commenting on his experiences in the Reagan administration.

Democracy: 1 person = 1 vote. Free market democracy: 1 dollar = 1 vote.
-- Ty Meissner

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France

Courtesy is an obligation; friendship a gift.
-- Loosely quoted Vilani proverb. Mark Fletcher (TML)

Art should teach, inspire, be uplifting -- not make you feel all life is useless and basically a waste of time. That's what *religion* is for.
-- Laughing Collie 02May96

But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedom's defenses are to found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Being exposed to radiation is not a particularly good way to gain superpowers. If you won't take our word for it, just ask the superheroes who have used this method in the past - Captain Leukemia, The Meltdown Man, Mr. Low Sperm count, Ms. Low Sperm Count, The Inside-Out Man, The Incredible Cancer Victim or The Portentous Blotch.
-- "How to be a Superhero", p14. ISBN #1-56163-051-9

He's got a fine tan shirt with an emblem on the chest The interstellar girls all like him the best Captain of the crew, and he knows kung-fu And he did Joan Collins in 1932
-- "William Shatner" by The Scofflaws

I would say America was lost sometime in the early 1970s. We stopped educating our children, parents stopped giving them a foundation for adulthood, we began building more prisons -- I think just beginning to face the results.
-- Joe Coleman (?)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

My love runs by like a day in June,
        And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
        In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
        Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
        And I wish somebody'd shoot him. -- Dorothy Parker

BTW, "the exception proves the rule" is a bastardization of the original Latin phrase, (from memory) "exceptio probat regulum", which means "the exception puts the rule to the test of proof."

To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
-- Czeslaw Milosz

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet not withstanding go out to meet it.
-- Thucydides

The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Samson's time.
-- Ricahrd M. Nixon

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves, let us count our spoons.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson

> How can I argue with this guy? You can't. He's childish, loud, repetitive, and completely, blindly sure of himself. Your best method of attack, oddly enough, is to do what Mary does -- kill file him. After all... would you argue with a donkey just because it began braying in the middle of one of your conversations?
-- Collie

As economist Walter Williams points out, the difference between economic power and political power is the difference between seduction and rape.

Nobody gets to this place by ignoring reality in any way whatsoever.
-- Rand

Use of controls, adjustments, or procedures other than specified in the manual may result in hazardous radiation exposure.
-- Notes accompanying a CD player

If messianics around the time of Vlad the Impaler had caught on, people would go around wearing pointed sticks.

Al Gore? Isn't he that politidroid trying to parrot his dad with the Infobahn, the guy married to that fascist who spoke on one of Zappa's albums?

If liberal education is so illuminating, why do they all become salesdroids?

Prof. D. Denning: fool, fascist or Faust? Only the NSA knows for sure..

The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.
-- Attributed to UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali

If it works, its aesthetic.
-- Ted Hoff Jr., codesigner of the 4004

Politicians prefer unarmed peasants without encryption technology.

This message was prepared using only genuine *solid state* digital circuits and electrons *identical* to those used by the National Bureau of Standards.

If cocaine is legalized, how will the CIA fund covert operations in South America?
-- Surgeon General Elders:

Society has recognized over time that certain kinds of scientific inquiry can endanger society as a whole and has applied either directly, or through scientific/ethical constraints, restrictions on the kind and amount of research that can be done in those areas.
-- Bobby R. Inman, Feb 1982

Please enjoy the latter portion of December, or the early portion of January, in the manner you deem most appropriate! Or don't, as you see fit. Either way, please wear your seatbelt at all times.

I will not do it as a hack I will not do it for my friends I will not do it on a Mac I will not write for Uncle Sam I will not do it on weekends I won't do ADA, Sam-I-Am

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-- T.S. Eliot

Basically, they were shooting at a moving target that was jolting back and forth in many different directions..It was very excitable and moving at a very high rate of speed for a cow.
-- Irvine City Manager, explaining 43 police bullets fired into a cow caught entering the 405 (LA Times 11/11/93)

Claimer: These ARE the opinions of my employer.

Convince the lion that you are not prey and that you may be dangerous yourself
-- From "What to do if you encounter a mountain lion", Orange County Dept of Harbor, Beaches, and Parks.

Outside of this country, high-schools tend to be academic.
-- overheard on radio

Leftist politics is a way to assuage the guilt that grows from pity.
-- D.J.Boudreax

Maybe if you're interesting enough, they'll keep you as pets.

You know. Bits. Pixels. Nucleotides. Dollars. Hormones. Turn signals. Signal-to-noise. Spikes. Pheromones. Smiles. Information.

"You mean you were speaking into the mouthpiece of one phone sending your voice around the world into your ear through a phone on the other side of your head?" I asked the Captain. I had a vision of something vaguely autoerotic going on, in a complex eletronic way.
-- Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire Magazine, October 1973

Building programs to build faster chips so we can build programs faster..

If I do what I do, it is only to explore a System. Computers. Systems. That's my bag.
-- Capt'n Crunch

Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created.
-- W. Heisenberg

Your cult is next.

A computer is an ICs way of making another IC.

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
-- John von Neumann

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

Cities are prisons for people who don't know better.

If you contain a gene that's been patented, and you have kids, do you have to pay royalties?

Somewhere on the continuum between ergonomics and hedonism...

I agree with John Gilmore -- I have far more confidence in the ability of physics and mathematics to protect my privacy than in laws passed by a government that can violate or ignore them at will.

Love your country but fear its government.
-- N.E. folk wisdom

Hippies are easy to ignore, but hippies with computers are hard to ignore.
-- Bruce Sterling 1992

Funding Wisdom #1: The NIH will readily fund the diseases common to congresscritters and their friends.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
-- Henry David Thoreau

The difference between programmers and artists is that the programmers don't expect outsiders to understand or be interested in their issues and even apoligize for 'talking shop' in public, whereas the artists hold the outsiders in contempt.
-- RST

To get to the new paradigm, you don't just think about what it would be like. You put down stakes and try to start living in it.
-- Mark Weiser, head of Comp Sci Lab, Xerox PARC, as reported in Advanced Imaging Aug 92

He was now in full possesion of his physical sensses, They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert, He looked at the forest and the veining of each leaf, He had not known that he lived in so wild a region.
-- Ambrose Bierce, An Occurance At Owl Creek

People that are really very wierd can get into sensative positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

Earthquakes are the process by which stresses in the earth's surface are transferred to the inhabitants thereon.
-- James Barrera, Registered Professional Civil Engineer

Remember, if these weren't hard problems, we wouldn't be interested in them.
-- K. Madsen

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
-- Antoine de St. Exupery

Once limits on the brains capacity are exceeded, symptoms of information overload appear: failures of response; irritability; boredom; the inability to take decisive action; finally a pervading sense of 'so what.'
-- R. Restak M.D., _The Brain Has A Mind Of Its Own_

Don't you believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear.
-- Lou Reed

Bad or destructive computer programs (especially computer viruses) do not require bad circuitry; killer storms are not the result of defective atmostpheric events; horrible human behavior does not require a defect in the machinery to explain it.

The difference between a Leftist and a Rightist can best be discerned by a consideration of their views towards property rights. The Leftist believes in everybody's right to someone else's property, whereas the Rightist is someone who believes that they have a right to everyone else's property.

Modern physics: the harder you smash things together, the smaller the bits that fly off.

Modern biology: life is the result of a piece of assembly code that's been hacked for about 4 billion years, and there are no specs.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
-- Henry David Thoreau.

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth as they see it.
-- N. Chomsky

Those who will not reason Perish in the act Those who will not act Perish for that reason
-- W.H.Auden

: You are in a dark room with a compiler, emacs, an internet connection,
: and a thermos of coffee.
: Your move ?

Typically its only a very small handful of people to whom I can communicate the details of what I'm doing. And that's life.
-- Kip Thorne, Caltech theoretical physicist

I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo

No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.
-- Siddhartha, from Roger Zelazny's _Lord of Light_, page 28.

"No machine can X" <-- "I'm such a bad psychologist that I can't think of any way that 'X' might work."
-- M. Minsky, _Learning Meaning_

...This five-year drought could seriously damage the environment..
-- some 'expert' on the radio

A number of computer security experts have said the [NSA] has objected to adopting the RSA standard because the system is too difficult for the intelligence agency to crack.
-- RISKS Vol 12 No. 6

If the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't
-- Pugh

koyaaniskatsi (hopi) n. : 1) crazy life 2) life in turmoil 3) life disintegrating 4) life out of balance 5) state of life that calls for another way of living

Using UNIX(tm), the OS preferred by 9 out of 10 cats that walk on keyboards.

Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply becasue it is the law, that's a pretty likely sign that it shouldn't be a law.

Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses.
-- Geo. Bush, 4-May-1991

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Exactly how can you say the coca plant, the hemp plant, the poppy, ergot fungus, peyote cactus, grapes are "unnatural"?

In December of 1933, Prohibition was finally repealed, because people recognized that banning alcohol was worse than allowing it. Do you see alcohol wars now? Turf wars between rival alcohol-funded gangs with guns? Etc., etc.?

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Even the most Bush-happy, flag suckling jack-arse knows deep-down inside that something is wrong. America is over and everyone knows it, the New World Order has a dying empire odor and changing the channel ain't going to make this go away.
-- Jello Biafra, "I Blow Minds for a Living".

Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
-- P.K. Dick

When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all.

Druids worship trees. Zen Druids worship trees that don't exist. Reformed Druids worship trees and shrubs. Reformed Zen Druids worship trees and shrubs that don't exist.

It gradually occurred to me that if you flattened out the forest, looked at it as if it were pasted on a canvas and forgot that what you were looking at were trees, leaves and plants that you could climb or walk beneath, you could appreciate the forest solely as a visual experience, unrelated to its biological essence. You would be looking at a non-representations expression of color, shape and texture.
-- T. Fitzharris

The ultimate result of shielding men from the results of folly is to fill the world with fools

Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
-- C. D. Tavares

The U.S. Constitution may be flawed, but it's a whole lot better than what we have now.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine

We preserve our liberty with 4 boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge.

       Heterosexual does NOT mean homophobic
          Caucasian does NOT mean racist
               Male does NOT mean sexist
"Love your country" does NOT mean "trust its government"

Banning "Assault Weapons" to fight crime is as stupid as banning condoms to prevent rape.

Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a government

It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.

From: frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)

Of course, once the new "Child Abuse, Drug Kingpin, and International Terrorist Prevention In-Home Video Surveilance Escrow System is in place you won't be able to get away with it. You know the proposal -- the Feds put video cameras in everyone's home and run tape on everyone but the tapes are guarded in escrow by employees of the Rural Electrification Administration and the Tea Tasting Board until the authorities have probable cause to take a look at the disgusting way you choose to live your life.

The best comment on this comes from Tim May's .sig which is something like 'national borders are just speedbumps on the information superhighway'. In cyberspace, the earth is only one second wide.

In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.
-- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul
-- George Bernard Shaw

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.
-- Cicero, 63 BC

It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.
-- Joycelyn Elders Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government.
-- David Boaz

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P. J. O'Rourke

We hate our politicians so much that even if they tell us they lied, we don't believe them.
-- Peter Newman

We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
-- Friedrich Engels

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-- Plato

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
-- Charles Austin Beard, historian

The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.
-- Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session ( February 1982 )

I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding the Income Tax Law, I will meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry time, for all our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual center, for no one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it
-- Senator Elihu Root of NY, 1913

A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.
-- George L. Roman

The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless.

When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
-- James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
-- Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

MS-DOS is like Communism: It doesn't work and you wouldn't want to use it even if it did.

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
-- John Quincy Adams

I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people.
-- John Anderson, Independent presidential candidate, 1980

When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.
-- Fredric Bastiat, early French economist

For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce.
-- Peter T. Bauer

[The makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love.
-- Rita Mae Brown, novelist

Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies.
-- Alan Burris, A Liberty Primer

Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers.
-- Frank Chodorov

I'm a politician, and as a politician I have the perogotive to lie whenever I want.
-- Charles Peacock, ex-director of Madison Guaranty, the Arkansas S&L at center of Whitewatergate.

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.
-- David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
-- John Philpot Curran, 1790

Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation from happening. [...] The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.
-- U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, 1889

The children who know how to think for themselves, spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.
-- John Dewey (1899), educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools.

Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future [...] where people will be defined by their associations.
-- John Dewey (1896), educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools.

Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas.
-- William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice, 1953

Aperi os tuum muto,
        et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est,
        et judica inopem et pauperem.
         -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9

I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS. Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism

Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time magazine?
-- Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman

The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it. James A. Donald

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books.
-- Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark - Mapp vs. Ohio

A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability - old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation.
-- George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
-- Patrick Henry, 3 Elliot at 45, Debates In The Virginia Convention

No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.
-- George D. Herron

If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then the American democracy is in trouble.
-- Coretta Scott King

Our forefathers made one mistake. What they should have fought for was representation without taxation.
-- Fletcher Knebel, historian

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.
-- George Santayana

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.
-- John Locke, 1690

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
-- James Madison

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number is self-protection.

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
-- John Stuart Mill, 1859

The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.
-- Albert Jay Nock

Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
-- Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was.
-- US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
-- Congressman Ron Paul, 1987

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
-- [Francisco d'Anconia], via Ayn Rand

Pragmatism is the convenient conclusion reached by those who lack the patience or intelligence to formulate a consistant ideology.
-- Mark Hanley

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
-- Stephen Schneider, environmental activist, in _Discover_, Oct. '89

I oppose registration for the draft... because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom.
-- Ronald Reagan

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.
-- Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

When I was a kid I was told anyone could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Will Rogers, 1920's

It's no longer an issue of contention that privatization is a solution. You can always rely on government to make the right decision, but only after it has exhausted every other conceivable alternative.
-- E. S. Savas, a management professor at Baruch College in New York who advised Giuliani during the campaign.

Decriminalization would take the profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related violence that is currently plaguing our streets.
-- Kurt L. Schmoke, Baltimore Mayor

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
-- Joseph Stalin

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.
-- Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that the only distinctly native American criminal class is Congress.
-- Mark Twain

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.
-- Alexander Fraser Tyler, "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"

Although I am a strong political conservative, I now believe that the costs of our fruitless struggle against illegal drugs are not worth the modest benefits likely to be achieved.
-- Prof. Ernest van den Haag, contributing editor, National Review

A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade.
-- Thorstein Veblen, economist

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
-- Voltaire

It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's , vote for me." So what do the politicians do? They offer the in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs.
-- Don Farrar - average guy, age 51

We propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders. People are the great resource, and so long as we keep our economy free, more people means more growth, the more the merrier. Study after study shows that even the most recent immigrants give more than they take.
-- Wall Street Journal

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?
-- Daniel Webster

Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it.
-- Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form a legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, 'Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.'
-- Walter Williams, economist and syndicated columnist

The Pen is mightier than the Sword.
The Court is mightier than the Pen.
The Sword is mightier than the Court.
-- Rey Barry

Every dollar spent to punish a drug user or seller is a dollar that cannot be spent collecting restitution from a robber. Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child. Every trial held to prosecute a drug user or seller is court time that could be used to prosecute a rapist in a case that might otherwise have been plea bargained.
-- Randy E. Barnett, "Curing the Drug-Law Addiction"

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state; Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution...
-- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948) Approved by the United Nations with the nations of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia, & South Africa abstaining.

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision.
-- US v Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006

Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.
-- Heinrich Himmler

MTV may talk about lighting fires and killing children, but Janet Reno actually does something about it.
-- Spy Magazine

The pig if I am not mistaken Supplies us sausage, ham, and bacon. Let others say his heart is big I call it stupid of the pig.
-- O. Nash

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
-- Jim Larkin

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987

Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does.

As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.

The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes. This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in an excerpt from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"

To place in the limelight a great number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs, give them unlimited power and instant wealth, is bound to produce a lively and diverting result.
-- Anita Loos (1893-1981), speaking about Hollywood in her 1966 autobiography, "A Girl Like I". Loos wrote more than 200 screenplays, including "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
-- Thomas Jefferson

A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul
-- George Bernard Shaw

It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.
-- Joycelyn Elders

Maybe that's because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government.
-- David Boaz

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one man were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind.
-- John Stuart Mill

In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
-- James Madison

TANSTAAFL! There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Robert Heinlein

This year will go down in history; for the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.
-- Adolf Hitler (apocryphal)

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P. J. O'Rourke

We hate our politicians so much that even if they tell us they lied, we don't believe them.
-- Peter Newman

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

There is no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken