1 What I can't stand is the feeling that my brain is leaving me for
2 someone more interesting.
4 Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien
5 a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher.
6 (Perfection is apparently not achieved when nothing more can be added,
7 but when nothing else can be removed.)
8 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupe'ry, Terres des Hommes
10 "There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the
11 right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."
14 [T]he question of whether Machines Can Think, [...] is about as
15 relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
16 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra "The threats to computing science"
18 "A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek: Seen on
19 a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'..."
20 -- Joshua D. Wachs - Natural Intelligence, Inc.
22 If you wish to strive for peace of soul, then believe; if you wish to
23 be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
24 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
26 Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars
27 has to be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost
28 anything. And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into
29 the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
30 -- Jeff Dege, jdege@winternet.com
32 Our days are precious, but we gladly see them going
33 If in their place we find a thing more precious growing
34 A rare, exotic plant, our gardener's heart delighting
35 A child whom we are teaching, a booklet we are writing
36 -- Frederick Rükert _Wisdom of the Brahmans_
37 [Hermann Hesse _Glass Bead Game_]
39 Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the
40 vision to perceive a system which governs many people's lives; a
41 system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then
42 such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that
43 the system really is there and that it aught to be exited from.
44 -- Douglas R. Hofstadter _Gödel Escher Bach. Eternal Golden Braid_
46 Fate and Temperament are two words for one and the same concept.
47 -- Novalis [Hermann Hesse _Demian_]
49 Grimble left his mother in the food store and went to the launderette
50 and watched the clothes go round. It was a bit like color television
52 -- Clement Freud _Grimble_
54 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
55 signifies [...] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
56 who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending
57 money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of
58 its scientists, the hopes of its children. [...] This is not a way of
59 life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it
60 is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] [I]s there no other
61 way the world may live?
62 -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
64 A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very
65 easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over
66 expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without
67 discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the
68 syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors
69 are an abundant source of gain.
72 All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
73 -- Gaius Julius Caesar in "The Conspiracy of Catiline" by Sallust
75 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
78 If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its
79 freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it
80 values more, it will lose that, too.
81 -- W. Somerset Maugham
83 The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion [...] refutes its
84 thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's
85 labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight
86 has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by
87 sitting on it---and is just as likely to succeed.
88 -- Alex Kozinski, Dissenting in Silveira v. Lockyer
89 (CV-00-00411-WBS p5983-4)
91 If I had a letter, sealed it in a locked vault and hid the vault
92 somewhere in New York. Then told you to read the letter, thats not
93 security, thats obscurity. If I made a letter, sealed it in a vault,
94 gave you the blueprints of the vault, the combinations of 1000 other
95 vaults, access to the best lock smiths in the world, then told you to
96 read the letter, and you still can't, thats security.
99 Q: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the
100 Experience of the Past Million Years?
102 -- Bokonon _The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon_ (Vonnegut _Cats Cradle_)
104 This can't be happening to me. I've got tenure.
105 -- James Hynes _Publish and Perish_
107 Identical parts aren't.
110 Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
113 If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
116 The solution to a problem changes the problem.
119 There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved
120 by brute strength and ignorance.
123 For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing
127 The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
128 that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot
129 possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to
131 -- Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_
133 Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves
134 exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves
135 only the unanimity of the graveyard.
136 -- Justice Roberts in 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
138 The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one
139 day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and
140 that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.
141 -- Sir Karl Popper _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §11
143 [A] theory is falsifiable [(and therefore scientific) only] if the
144 class of its potential falsifiers is not empty.
145 -- Sir Karl Popper _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §21
147 I shall require that [a scientific system's] logical form shall be
148 such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a
149 negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system
150 to be refuted by experience.
151 -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §6
153 It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course,
154 completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death
156 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p25
158 "The trouble with you, Ibid" he said, "is that you think you're the
159 biggest bloody authority on everything"
160 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p146
162 He was wrong. Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them
163 neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a
164 lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and
165 the chuck keys for electric drills.
166 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p166
168 Cheop's Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
169 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p242
171 Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
172 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p250
174 Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
175 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p251
177 Where I sleep at night, is this important compared to what I read
178 during the day? What do you think defines me? Where I slept or what I
180 -- Thomas Van Orden of Van Orden v. Perry
182 "You have many years to live--do things you will be proud to remember
184 -- Shinka proverb. (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p413)
186 Leukocyte... I am your father.
187 -- R. Stevens http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1546
189 We cast this message into the cosmos. [...] We are trying to survive
190 our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved
191 the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations.
192 This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill
193 in a vast and awesome universe.
194 -- Jimmy Carter on the Voyager Golden Record
196 [M]en and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other
200 As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
201 instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly
202 unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware
203 of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting
204 victims of the darkness.
205 -- William O. Douglas
207 One day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back
211 To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is
215 If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
219 I'm wrong to criticize the valor of your brave men. It's important to
220 die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who
221 wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one.
222 -- Cyrano de Bergerac
224 We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die
225 together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to
226 live together we have to talk.
229 A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless.
230 -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
232 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test his
233 character, give him power.
236 When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one
237 by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
238 -- Edmund Burke "Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents"
240 Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the
241 rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct
243 -- Mark Twain _A Horse's Tail_
245 No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this
246 does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
247 -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_
249 I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
250 up where I needed to be.
251 -- Douglas Adams _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_
253 Mozart tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what
254 it's like to be Beethoven, and Bach tells us what it's like to be the
258 This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic
261 Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or
262 daring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But
263 the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer
264 to achieve immortality by not dying.
265 -- Terry Pratchet _The Color of Magic_
267 Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their
268 faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord
269 Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a
270 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
271 -- Terry Pratchet _Mort_
273 He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said
274 that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He
275 was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little
276 begun to fascinate him -- as if he had managed to outlive himself, as
277 if he were somehow living a posthumous life.
278 -- Paul Auster _City of Glass_
280 I really wanted to talk to her.
281 I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.
282 -- Peter Watts _Blindsight_ p294
284 I learned really early the difference between knowing the name of
285 something and knowing something
286 -- Richard Feynman "What is Science" Phys. Teach. 7(6) 1969
288 Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle
289 is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to
291 -- Richard Feynman "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific
292 Culture in Modern Society"; 1964
294 To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an
298 Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
300 -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
302 You could say to the Universe this is not /fair/. And the Universe
303 would say: Oh it isn't? Sorry.
304 -- Terry Pratchett _Soul Music_ p357
306 Love is... a complex sequence of neurochemical reactions that makes
307 people behave like idiots. It's similar to intoxication, but the
308 hangover's even worse.
309 -- J. Jacques _Questionable Content_ #1039
310 http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1039
312 Who is thinking this?
314 -- Greg Egan _Diaspora_ p38
316 I have no use for "before and after" pictures.
317 I can't remember starting, and I'm never done.
318 -- a softer world #221
319 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=221
321 Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue
322 to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your
323 flowcharts; they'll be obvious.
324 -- Fredrick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man Month
326 After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has
327 stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if an enemy has
328 an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there.
329 -- Terry Pratchett _Jingo_ p265
331 Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to
332 be said for them: At least they meant that you could hate and despise
334 -- Terry Pratchett _The Fifth Elephant_ p111
336 "You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in
337 a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from
338 asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my
339 mother told me when I was young."
340 "Why, what did she tell you?"
341 "I don't know, I didn't listen."
342 –- Douglas Adams _The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy_
344 It was a very familiar voice. [...] It was a voice you could have used
345 to open a bottle of whine.
346 -- Terry Pratchett _The Last Continent_ p270
348 We must realize that today's Establishment is the New George III.
349 Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If
350 it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
351 -- William O. Douglas _Points of Rebellion_
353 "Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak
354 up for them as have no voices."
355 -- Grandma Aching in _The Wee Free Men_ by Terry Pratchett p227
357 But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only
358 disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what
359 will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?
360 -- Fridtjof Nansen _Farthest North_ p152
362 There is no more concentrated form of evil
365 I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be
366 pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My
367 life is my own. I resign.
368 -- Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in "The Prisoner"
370 Let us chat together a moment, my friend. There are still several
371 hours until dawn, and I have the whole day to sleep.
372 -- Count Orlock in _Nosferatu (1922)_
374 Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
375 as society is free to use the results.
376 -- Richard M Stallman _GNU Manifesto_
378 "She decided what she wished to happen and then assumed that reality
379 would bend to her wishes." [...] "Reality doesn't indulge wishes."
380 -- Terry Goodkind _Phantom_ p133
382 All my dreams came true.
383 I just didn't think them through.
384 -- a softer world #388
385 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=388
387 You think to yourself, hey, it's a test tube, for God's sake. Pretty
388 soon, though, the rush from a test tube isn't enough. You want to
389 experiment more and more. Then before you know it, you're laying in
390 the corner of a lab somewhere with a Soxhlet apparatus in one hand,
391 a three neck flask in the other, strung out and begging for grant
393 -- Tim Mitchell, 1994 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize Speech
395 The smallest quantity of bread that can be sliced and toasted has yet
396 to be experimentally determined. In the quantum limit we must
397 necessarily encounter fundamental toast particles which the author
398 will unflinchingly designate here as "croutons".
399 -- Cser, Jim. Nanotechnology and the Physical Limits of Toastability.
402 [The] JK-88 [coffee] percolator is capable of achieving the ultimate
403 balance of aroma and density, aftertaste and emollience, pentosans and
404 tannins. The next step is to reduce the cost of the HPLC-E technology
405 to the point where it can be manufactured for less than the cost of a
407 -- Charles Stross "Extracts from the Club Diary" in _Toast_ p83-4
409 Something the junk advertisers don't seem to understand: we live in an
410 information super-saturated world. If I don't want to buy something,
411 no amount of shouting or propagandizing will budge me; all it will do
412 is get me annoyed. On the other hand, if I have a need for your
413 product, I can seek it out in an eyeblink.
414 -- Charles Stross "Toast: A Con Report" in _Toast_ p136
416 [On a trip back from collecting grass seeds in tropical bird stomachs
417 and being thought by the customs agents to be transporting Marijuana.]
418 "Anyone so square as to tell you they are transporting grass seeds is
420 -- Peter K. Klopfer _Seeds of Doubt_ Science 134:177 10 April 2009
423 "Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar.
424 Therefore, immediacy."
425 -- Iain M. Banks _Look to Windward_ p 213
427 He quite enjoyed the time by himself in the mornings. The day was too
428 early to have started going really wrong.
429 -- Terry Pratchet _Only You Can Save Mankind_ p133
431 Let me bring you up to speed:
433 You are now up to speed.
434 -- Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in _The Pink Panther 2_ (2009)
436 A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any
437 spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing or consume an entire forest.
438 [...] A kiss could change the entire world.
439 -- Scott Westerfeld _The Killing of Worlds_ p336
441 Rule 30: "A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the
443 -- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_ March 8th, 2003
444 http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030308.html
446 There is no form of lead-poisoning which more rapidly and thoroughly
447 pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches the
448 young author through mental contact with type metal.
449 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (Tilton 1947 p67)
451 It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
452 -- Frederick Douglass
454 "That is why I am still tyrant of [Ankh-Morpork]. The way to retain
455 power, I have always thought, is to ensure the absolute unthinkability
456 of oneself not being there."
457 -- Terry Pratchett _Unseen Academicals_ p391
462 -- a softer world #437
463 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=437
465 First you take a drink,
466 then the drink takes a drink,
467 then the drink takes you.
468 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
470 It can sometimes happen that a scholar, his task completed, discovers
471 that he has no one to thank. Never mind. He will invent some debts.
472 Research without indebtedness is suspect, and somebody must always,
474 -- Umberto Eco "How to Write an Introduction"
476 Let the victors, when they come,
477 When the forts of folly fall
478 Find thy body by the wall!
481 unbeingdead isn't beingalive
482 -- e.e. cummings "31" _73 Poems_
484 nothing except the impossible shall occur
485 -- e.e. cummings "XLII" _1 x 1_
487 -tommorow is our permanent address
488 and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
489 we'll move away still further:into now
490 -- e.e. cummings "XXXIX" _1 x 1_
493 spring when the world is mud-
494 luscious the little lame baloonman
497 -- e.e. cummings "[in Just-]"
499 life's not a paragraph
500 And death i think is no parenthesis
501 -- e.e. cummings "Four VII" _is 5_
503 Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
504 We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
505 -- William Saroyan _My Heart's in the Highlands_
507 I made a bunch of stickers
508 to put on rooftops, and in secret tunnels.
509 "If you are reading this,
510 then you are awesome"
511 -- a softer world #569
512 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=569
514 6: If we are one, then we can defeat 2.
515 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Schizoid_
517 2: There is no out. There is only in.
518 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)"
520 6: I'm human. I have a thousand flaws. I break down. I get up or I
521 don't get up. I get lost. I make the same mistakes over and over. I
522 have scars and wounds. Sometimes when I can't bear them anymore, I
523 drink. You can't fix me. You can't fix any of us. You can't make us
525 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
527 We want 6. 6 is the 1.
528 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
530 I've had so much good luck recently I was getting sated with it. It's
531 like sugar, good luck. At first it's very sweet, but after a while you
532 start to think: any more of this and I shall be sick.
533 -- Adam Roberts _Yellow Blue Tibia_ p301
536 Because I am powerless
537 To amend a broken world.
538 -- Guy Gavriel Kay _Under Heaven_ p295
540 What prison taught me was that some people are born into a life where
541 they're going to be subjected to intense life experiences and personal
542 tragedy on an almost daily basis. [...] I don't think you get
543 enlightenment after something like that. I think all anyone really
544 wants, if they're honest with themselves, is a quiet, easy life
545 surrounded by people that love them. Anything else is a conceit.
548 Overcast nights are beautiful; the sun, mostly set, a near full moon
549 partially risen, light pollution from the city, and the sky delicately
550 purpleorangegray, as if it were a livid bruise.
552 The terrorist's job is to terrorize the people, to interfere with
553 freedom in such a way that disrupts ordinary life and commerce. With
554 due respect, it is clear that the above referenced governmental
555 agencies are aiding the terrorists' objective.
556 -- Gary Fielder in Gary Fielder vs Janet Napolitano et al.
558 [C]haos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought.
559 It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
560 -- Terry Pratchett _Interesting Times_ p4
562 Your absence has gone through me
563 Like thread through a needle.
564 Everything I do is stitched with its color.
565 -- W. S. Merwin "Poetry in Motion" p107
567 Logs drowse in the pond
568 Dreaming of their heroes
569 Alligator and crocodile
570 -- Vern Rutsala "Poetry in Motion" p77
572 Once, our bodies were bells:
573 Simply moving in the wind
575 -- Phillis Levin "Poetry in Motion" p55
577 It's brief and bright, dear children; bright and brief.
578 Delight's the lightning; the long thunder's grief.
579 -- John Frederick Nims "Poetry in Motion" p31
581 I would like to be the air
582 that inhabits you for a moment
583 only. I would like to be that unnoticed
585 -- Margaret Atwood "Poetry in Motion" p140
587 I stared at the mountain rising over me. Empty. It was a pointless
588 thing to have done -- climb up it, across it, and down it. Stupid! It
589 looked perfect; so clean and untouched, and we had changed nothing.
590 [...] I had been on it too long, and it had taken everything.
591 -- Joe Simpson "Touching the Void" p117
593 Have you ever noticed: the most vocal superpatriots are the old men
594 who send young men out to die.
595 -- Harlan Ellison "Basilisk" (_Deathbird Stories_ p73)
598 a computer with feelings.
601 -- a softer world #633
602 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=633
605 or die and teach by example
606 -- a softer world #625
607 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=625
609 I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym
610 -- xkcd http://xkcd.com/917/
612 [I]t's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are
613 done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for
614 the best, especially if there is some god involved.
615 -- Terry Pratchett _Snuff_ p185
617 "I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out
618 there." "There might as well be, [...] but most of it gets spent on
619 pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be
620 scraped together for particle accelerators."
621 -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p262
623 "Do you need [...] [t]ools? Stuff?"
624 "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. [...] We
626 -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p320
628 The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
629 Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making
630 mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes
631 from being corrected.
632 -- G. K. Chesterton "Illustrated London News (1924-04-19)"
634 You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost
635 anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
638 Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un
639 maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
640 Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
643 That's the wonderful thing about crayons. They can take you to more
644 places than a starship.
645 -- Guinan "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Rascals (#6.7)"
647 He wore trifocals. There was stratigraphy even in his glasses.
648 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p364
650 "Old hypotheses never really die, they're like dormant volcanoes."
651 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p313
653 "While geologists argue, the rocks just sit there and sometimes they
655 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p304
657 Thanks be to God, that he gave me Stubbornness, when I know I am right.
658 -- John Adams (Letter to Edmund Jennings, 27 September 1782)