No Moral Precept

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

-- Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784), French philosopher and chief editor of the historic project to produce L'Encyclopidie, as quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Quotations (1980) by Mary Collison, Robert L. Collison, p. 235

Amateurs

Software is an incredibly young discipline. Everything in software is so new and so frequently being reinvented that almost nobody really knows what they are doing. It is amateurs who make all the progress.

-- Jeff Atwood, 29 May 2008, Coding Horror Blog,
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001124.html

Aladdin's Lamp

Yes! Ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

-- Lord George Gordon (Noel) Byron, 6th Baron Byron 22 January 1788 - 19 April 1824), Anglo-Scottish poet and leading figure in Romanticism, Don Juan (canto XII, st. 12), 1823

What People Want

When you're young, you look at television and think, "There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down." But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

-- Steve Jobs (24 February 1955-), Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc., Interview in WIRED magazine, February 1996

Another Flaw

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

Theater

It's a kind of theater. Sometimes, a car will fly by in the air.

-- Juma Gul, who works beside a mountainous stretch of the Afghan national highway that is famous for accidents, New York Times, 8 February 2010

A Moral

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

-- Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), (1832 - 1898), British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, and logician, the Mock Turtle speaking to Alice, in Alice in Wonderland

Getting On Top

He just needs a little more help getting on top of the plane now.

-- Sue Pitham, on the stroke that has slowed down 89-year-old Tom Lackey, who took up wing-walking over the English Channel at 160 miles an hour, New York Times, 8 January 2010

Suffer A Little

If you want your children to have a peaceful life, let them suffer a little hunger and a little coldness.

-- Chinese Proverb

Being Methodical

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

-- G. K. Chesterton, The Fad of the Fisherman (1922)

Look It Over Carefully

After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.

-- Alfred Edward Perlman (1902-1982), American railway executive

Enough Is Enough

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

-- Lao-Tzu (BC 600-?), Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

Contented Dazzlement

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

-- Lewis Thomas (1913 - 1993), physician, author, Dean of Yale Medical School, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Poet Tree

     AI
    POE
    GRAY
   DANTE
   HORACE
  KHAYYAM
  KALIDASA
 SOPHOCLES
 BAUDELAIRE
 SHAKESPEARE
     LI
     TU
     SU
ARISTOPHANES

Q. What is this curious list I see?
A. The answer is plainly, "Poet - tree".

-- Kay Haugaard, on the Word-A-Day mailing list

Alphabet Shop

appleman@ncsa.uiuc.edu

After 19 weeks, I now have a new gig. That's the longest break (by 3 weeks) that I've taken from full-time employment in 30 years.

I work for the Cyber Security Directorate of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, in the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technology at the University of Illinois.

Or, as I tell my kids, I work for the CSD of the NCSA, in the IACAT at the UI, aka the Alphabet Shop.

http://security.ncsa.uiuc.edu/

Normal

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for -- in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

-- Ellen Goodman (1941-), American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist

Until The Day

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Thanksgiving Dinner

Be glad you're not a turkey.

Turkey

TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

Sesame Street

Sally, you've never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You're gonna love it!

-- Gordon Robinson (character), the very first line spoken on the very first episode, 10 November 1969. Sesame Street is the longest running children's program on US television.

In Sarah We Trust

Who calls a shot like that? Who makes a decision like that? It's a disturbing trend.

-- Sarah Palin, on a 2005 decision approved by President George W. Bush to put "In God We Trust" on the edge -- rather than the face -- of new presidential dollar coins, November 2009

Safe To Assume

Although CREW has been unable to uncover the demographic makeup of [these companies], it seems safe to assume the vast majority of their employees are not pregnant women, infants and children, young adults up to 24 years old, and healthcare workers.

-- Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, after more than a dozen companies were given the vaccines, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, 5 November 2009

Not Evil

Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing people.

-- Warren Spector, creative director of Junction Point, a Disney-owned game developer overhauling the image of Mickey Mouse, New York Times, 5 November 2009

Train Set

This is all happening because my father didn't buy me a train set as a kid.

-- Warren Buffett, joking about his decision to buy a railroad, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, New York Times, 4 November 2009

Karzai Wins!

Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry.

-- George Ade (1866 - 1944), American writer, newspaper columnist, and playwright

Recession Over

Anyone who thinks the recession is over just because the economy grew in the 3rd quarter is an economist.

-- Ron Elving, NPR's "It's All Politics" podcast, 29 October 2009

Happy Marriage

There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.

-- Clint Eastwood (May 31, 1930-), American actor, film director, film producer and composer; 5-time Academy Award recipient

Deviation

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

-- Frank Zappa (1940-1993), composer, musician, film director

Insurmountable Opportunities

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

-- Walt Kelly (1913-1973), creator of the Pogo comic strip

A Dizzy Ride

To sum up: 1) The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2) Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3) Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.

-- H. L. Mencken, twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, "Coda" from Smart Set, December 1920

Metal Detectorists

People laugh at metal detectorists.

-- Terry Herbert, an Englishman who found an Anglo-Saxon treasure in a farm field worth an estimated $1.6M, NY Times, 25 September 2009

Reality

Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.

-- Gary Zukav, best-selling author and former Green Beret officer during the war in Vietnam

What We Make It

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

-- Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses, 1860-1961), American folk artist

Grand Things

This positions us as a grand city where grand things happen.

-- Alejandro Rojas Diaz, Mexico City's tourism secretary, who organized an event at which 12,937 people danced to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in pursuit of a world record, New York Times, 8 September 2009

End-Of-The-World Switch

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

-- Terry Pratchett, novelist (b. 1948)

Youth And Middle-Age

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author, poet, naturalist, and philosopher, Journals, July 14, 1852

Allow Their Children

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.

-- Bill Cosby (1937-), American actor, comedian, television producer and activist

Less Fun

It's simply less fun pulling up to the stoplight in a Hummer than it used to be. It's a change in norms.

-- Robert Barbera, chief economist at research and trading firm ITG, on the shift in consumer tastes created by the recession, New York Times, 29 August 2009

Still Got Food

If you lose your job tomorrow, you've still got food.

-- Lloyd Romriell, of Annis, Idaho, who has begun raising chickens, New York Times, 4 August 2009

Mobile Phone

I'm going to kick his arse. The millions that have been spent on this search, the man hours and woman hours that have gone into it ... all because he goes out on a walk without his mobile phone. The only teenager in the world who goes on a 10-mile hike and leaves his mobile phone behind.

-- Richard Cass, father of British teenager Jamie Neale, 19, who was lost for 12 days while hiking in Australia's Blue Mountains, 15 July 2009

RIP Walter Cronkite

This is my last broadcast as the anchorman of The CBS Evening News; for me, it's a moment for which I long have planned, but which, nevertheless, comes with some sadness. For almost 2 decades, after all, we've been meeting like this in the evenings, and I'll miss that. But those who have made anything of this departure, I'm afraid have made too much. This is but a transition, a passing of the baton .... Furthermore, I'm not even going away! I'll be back from time to time with special news reports and documentaries, and, beginning in June, every week, with our science program, Universe. Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is: Friday, March 6, 1981.

-- Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (4 November 1916 - 17 July 2009), American broadcast journalist, anchorman for The CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962 - 1981)

Meltdown

Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed.

-- Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, as hearings began on her Supreme Court nomination, New York Times, 14 July, 2009

Cartoon Thought Bubbles

You'll have half the participants BlackBerrying each other as a submeeting, with a running commentary on the primary meeting. BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.

-- Philippe Reines, senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Times, 22 June 2009

Looking Stupid

[W]e need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.

-- Charles Dunstone, head of UK ISP TalkTalk, on legislation aimed at limiting file sharing, quoted on Slashdot, 7 June 2009

Wait, What?

Wait, was Michael Jackson black?

-- 10-year old Alyssa, looking at the cover to Michael Jackson's 1982 LP "Thriller"

And Lets Fly

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club.

-- John W. Campbell (1910-1971), American science fiction editor and writer, Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine (1965)

Retirement

Retirement is wonderful. It's doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.

-- Gene Perret, Emmy award-winning comedy writer, author

Respect His Theory

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

-- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), writer, editor, and critic, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

World Peace

If the militaries of all nations standardize on Windows, then eventually they will all be immobilized by malware -- thus bringing about world peace.

-- Comment by jhansonxi on the Linux Insider Blog, June 2009

Guns And Money

When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.

-- P. J. O'Rourke (1947-), American political satirist, journalist, and writer