What I can't stand is the feeling that my brain is leaving me for 
someone more interesting.
%
Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien
a ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien a retrancher.
(Perfection is apparently not achieved when nothing more can be added,
but when nothing else can be removed.)
 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupe'ry, Terres des Hommes
%
"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the    
right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."
 -- Bach 
%
[T]he question of whether Machines Can Think, [...] is about as
relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.
 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra "The threats to computing science"
%
"A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek: Seen on
a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'..."
 -- Joshua D. Wachs - Natural Intelligence, Inc.
%
If you wish to strive for peace of soul, then believe; if you wish to
be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars
has to be the HP-48 series of calculators.  They'll run almost
anything.  And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into
the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
 -- Jeff Dege, jdege@winternet.com
%
Our days are precious, but we gladly see them going
If in their place we find a thing more precious growing
A rare, exotic plant, our gardener's heart delighting
A child whom we are teaching, a booklet we are writing
 -- Frederick Rükert _Wisdom of the Brahmans_ 
 [Hermann Hesse _Glass Bead Game_]
%
Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the
vision to perceive a system which governs many people's lives; a
system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then
such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that
the system really is there and that it aught to be exited from. 
 -- Douglas R. Hofstadter _Gödel Escher Bach. Eternal Golden Braid_
%
Fate and Temperament are two words for one and the same concept.
 -- Novalis [Hermann Hesse _Demian_]
%
Grimble left his mother in the food store and went to the launderette
and watched the clothes go round. It was a bit like color television
only with less plot.
 -- Clement Freud _Grimble_
%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies [...] 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 cloud of threatening war, it
is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] [I]s there no other
way the world may live?
 -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very
easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over
expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without
discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the
syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors
are an abundant source of gain.
 -- Anatole France
%
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
 -- Gaius Julius Caesar in "The Conspiracy of Catiline" by Sallust
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
 -- Aesop
%
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its
freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it
values more, it will lose that, too.
 -- W. Somerset Maugham
%
The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion [...] refutes its
thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's
labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight
has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by
sitting on it---and is just as likely to succeed.
 -- Alex Kozinski, Dissenting in Silveira v. Lockyer
    (CV-00-00411-WBS p5983-4)
%
If I had a letter, sealed it in a locked vault and hid the vault
somewhere in New York. Then told you to read the letter, thats not
security, thats obscurity. If I made a letter, sealed it in a vault,
gave you the blueprints of the vault, the combinations of 1000 other
vaults, access to the best lock smiths in the world, then told you to
read the letter, and you still can't, thats security.
 -- Bruce Schneier
%
Q: What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the
Experience of the Past Million Years?
A: Nothing.
 -- Bokonon _The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon_ (Vonnegut _Cats Cradle_)
%
This can't be happening to me. I've got tenure.
 -- James Hynes _Publish and Perish_
%
Identical parts aren't.
 -- Beach's Law
%
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
 -- Tussman's Law
%
If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
 -- Lowery's Law
%
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
 -- Peer's Law
%
There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved
by brute strength and ignorance.
 -- William's Law
%
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing
continued to happen.
 -- Douglas Adams
%
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot
possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to
get at or repair.
 -- Douglas Adams  _Mostly Harmless_
%
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves
exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves
only the unanimity of the graveyard.
 -- Justice Roberts in 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
%
The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one
day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and
that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.
 -- Sir Karl Popper _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §11
%
[A] theory is falsifiable [(and therefore scientific) only] if the
class of its potential falsifiers is not empty.
 -- Sir Karl Popper _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §21
%
I shall require that [a scientific system's] logical form shall be
such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a
negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system
to be refuted by experience.
 -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_ §6
%
It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course,
completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death
for free.
 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p25
%
"The trouble with you, Ibid" he said, "is that you think you're the
biggest bloody authority on everything"
 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p146
%
He was wrong. Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them
neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a
lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the Marie Celeste, and
the chuck keys for electric drills.
 -- Terry Pratchet _Pyramids_ p166
%
Cheop's Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p242
%
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p250
%
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p251
%
Where I sleep at night, is this important compared to what I read
during the day? What do you think defines me? Where I slept or what I
did all day?
 -- Thomas Van Orden of Van Orden v. Perry
%
"You have many years to live--do things you will be proud to remember
when you are old."
 -- Shinka proverb. (John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p413)
%
Leukocyte... I am your father.
 -- R. Stevens http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=1546
%
We cast this message into the cosmos. [...] We are trying to survive
our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved
the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations.
This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill
in a vast and awesome universe.
 -- Jimmy Carter on the Voyager Golden Record
%
[M]en and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other
alternatives.
 -- Abba Ebban
%
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly
unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware
of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting
victims of the darkness.
 -- William O. Douglas
%
One day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back
in time.
 -- Steven Wright
%
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is
research.
 -- Steven Wright
%
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something.
 -- Steven Wright
%
I'm wrong to criticize the valor of your brave men. It's important to
die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who
wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one.
 -- Cyrano de Bergerac
%
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die
together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to
live together we have to talk. 
 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. 
 -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
%
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test his
character, give him power.
 -- Abraham Lincoln
%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one
by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
 -- Edmund Burke "Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents"
%
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the
rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct
these defects".
 -- Mark Twain _A Horse's Tail_
%
No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this
does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.
 -- Sir Karl Popper _Logic of Scientific Discovery_
%
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
up where I needed to be.
 -- Douglas Adams _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_
%
Mozart tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what
it's like to be Beethoven, and Bach tells us what it's like to be the
universe.
 -- Douglas Adams
%
This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic
 -- Terry Pratchett
%
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or
daring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But
the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer
to achieve immortality by not dying.
 -- Terry Pratchet _The Color of Magic_
%
Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their
faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord
Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a
12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
 -- Terry Pratchet _Mort_
%
He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said
that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He
was alive, and the stubbornness of this fact had little by little
begun to fascinate him -- as if he had managed to outlive himself, as
if he were somehow living a posthumous life.
 -- Paul Auster _City of Glass_
%
I really wanted to talk to her.
I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.
 -- Peter Watts _Blindsight_ p294
%
I learned really early the difference between knowing the name of
something and knowing something
 -- Richard Feynman "What is Science" Phys. Teach. 7(6) 1969
%
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle
is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to
fool.
 -- Richard Feynman "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific
    Culture in Modern Society"; 1964
%
To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an
authority myself
 -- Albert Einstein
%
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
you do it.
 -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
%
You could say to the Universe this is not /fair/. And the Universe
would say: Oh it isn't? Sorry.
 -- Terry Pratchett _Soul Music_ p357
%
Love is... a complex sequence of neurochemical reactions that makes
people behave like idiots. It's similar to intoxication, but the
hangover's even worse.
 -- J. Jacques _Questionable Content_ #1039
    http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1039
%
Who is thinking this?
I am.
 -- Greg Egan _Diaspora_ p38
%
I have no use for "before and after" pictures.
I can't remember starting, and I'm never done.
 -- a softer world #221
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=221
%
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue
to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your
flowcharts; they'll be obvious.
 -- Fredrick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
After the first battle of Sto Lat, I formulated a policy which has
stood me in good stead in other battles. It is this: if an enemy has
an impregnable stronghold, see he stays there.
 -- Terry Pratchett _Jingo_ p265
%
Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to
be said for them: At least they meant that you could hate and despise
them in comfort.
 -- Terry Pratchett _The Fifth Elephant_ p111
%
"You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in
a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from
asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my
mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
 –- Douglas Adams _The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy_
%
It was a very familiar voice. [...] It was a voice you could have used
to open a bottle of whine.
 -- Terry Pratchett _The Last Continent_ p270
%
We must realize that today's Establishment is the New George III.
Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If
it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
 -- William O. Douglas _Points of Rebellion_
%
"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak
up for them as have no voices."
 -- Grandma Aching in _The Wee Free Men_ by Terry Pratchett p227
%
But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only
disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what
will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?
 -- Fridtjof Nansen _Farthest North_ p152
%
There is no more concentrated form of evil
than apathy.
%
I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be
pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My
life is my own. I resign.
 -- Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in "The Prisoner"
%
Let us chat together a moment, my friend. There are still several
hours until dawn, and I have the whole day to sleep.
 -- Count Orlock in _Nosferatu (1922)_
%
Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
as society is free to use the results. 
 -- Richard M Stallman _GNU Manifesto_
%
"She decided what she wished to happen and then assumed that reality
would bend to her wishes." [...] "Reality doesn't indulge wishes."
 -- Terry Goodkind _Phantom_ p133
%
All my dreams came true.
I just didn't think them through.
 -- a softer world #388
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=388
%
You think to yourself, hey, it's a test tube, for God's sake. Pretty
soon, though, the rush from a test tube isn't enough. You want to
experiment more and more. Then before you know it, you're laying in
the corner of a lab somewhere with a Soxhlet apparatus in one hand,
a three neck flask in the other, strung out and begging for grant
money.
 -- Tim Mitchell, 1994 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize Speech
%
The smallest quantity of bread that can be sliced and toasted has yet
to be experimentally determined. In the quantum limit we must
necessarily encounter fundamental toast particles which the author
will unflinchingly designate here as "croutons".
 -- Cser, Jim. Nanotechnology and the Physical Limits of Toastability.
    AIR 1:3, June, 1995.
%
[The] JK-88 [coffee] percolator is capable of achieving the ultimate
balance of aroma and density, aftertaste and emollience, pentosans and
tannins. The next step is to reduce the cost of the HPLC-E technology
to the point where it can be manufactured for less than the cost of a
Boeing 757.
 -- Charles Stross "Extracts from the Club Diary" in _Toast_ p83-4
%
Something the junk advertisers don't seem to understand: we live in an
information super-saturated world. If I don't want to buy something,
no amount of shouting or propagandizing will budge me; all it will do
is get me annoyed. On the other hand, if I have a need for your
product, I can seek it out in an eyeblink.
 -- Charles Stross "Toast: A Con Report" in _Toast_ p136
%
[On a trip back from collecting grass seeds in tropical bird stomachs
and being thought by the customs agents to be transporting Marijuana.]
"Anyone so square as to tell you they are transporting grass seeds is
bound to be OK"
 -- Peter K. Klopfer _Seeds of Doubt_ Science 134:177 10 April 2009
%
"What, now?"
"Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar.
Therefore, immediacy."
  -- Iain M. Banks _Look to Windward_ p 213
%
He quite enjoyed the time by himself in the mornings. The day was too
early to have started going really wrong.
  -- Terry Pratchet _Only You Can Save Mankind_ p133
%
Let me bring you up to speed:
We know nothing.
You are now up to speed.
  -- Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in _The Pink Panther 2_ (2009)
%
A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any
spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing or consume an entire forest.
[...] A kiss could change the entire world.
  -- Scott Westerfeld _The Killing of Worlds_ p336
%
Rule 30: "A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the
further you'll go."
  -- Howard Tayler _Schlock Mercenary_ March 8th, 2003
     http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030308.html
%
There is no form of lead-poisoning which more rapidly and thoroughly
pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches the
young author through mental contact with type metal.
 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (Tilton 1947 p67)
%
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
 -- Frederick Douglass
%
"That is why I am still tyrant of [Ankh-Morpork]. The way to retain
power, I have always thought, is to ensure the absolute unthinkability
of oneself not being there."
 -- Terry Pratchett _Unseen Academicals_ p391
%
With one simple pill
we cured unhappiness
and art
 -- a softer world #437
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=437
%
First you take a drink,
then the drink takes a drink,
then the drink takes you.
 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
%
It can sometimes happen that a scholar, his task completed, discovers
that he has no one to thank. Never mind. He will invent some debts.
Research without indebtedness is suspect, and somebody must always,
somehow, be thanked.
 -- Umberto Eco "How to Write an Introduction"
%
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall
Find thy body by the wall!
 -- Matthew Arnold
%
unbeingdead isn't beingalive
 -- e.e. cummings "31" _73 Poems_
%
nothing except the impossible shall occur
 -- e.e. cummings "XLII" _1 x 1_
%
-tommorow is our permanent address
and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now
 -- e.e. cummings "XXXIX" _1 x 1_
%
in Just-
spring      when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman 

whistles       far       and wee 
 -- e.e. cummings "[in Just-]"
%
life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
 -- e.e. cummings "Four VII" _is 5_
%
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
 -- William Saroyan _My Heart's in the Highlands_
%
I made a bunch of stickers
to put on rooftops, and in secret tunnels.
"If you are reading this,
 then you are awesome"
 -- a softer world #569
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=569
%
6: If we are one, then we can defeat 2.
  -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Schizoid_
%
2: There is no out. There is only in.
  -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)"
%
6: I'm human. I have a thousand flaws. I break down. I get up or I
don't get up. I get lost. I make the same mistakes over and over. I
have scars and wounds. Sometimes when I can't bear them anymore, I
drink. You can't fix me. You can't fix any of us. You can't make us
perfect.
 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
%
We want 6. 6 is the 1.
 -- "The Prisoner (2009 Miniseries)" _Checkmate_
%
I've had so much good luck recently I was getting sated with it. It's
like sugar, good luck. At first it's very sweet, but after a while you
start to think: any more of this and I shall be sick.
 -- Adam Roberts _Yellow Blue Tibia_ p301
%
I cannot find rest
Because I am powerless
To amend a broken world.
 -- Guy Gavriel Kay _Under Heaven_ p295
%
What prison taught me was that some people are born into a life where
they're going to be subjected to intense life experiences and personal
tragedy on an almost daily basis. [...] I don't think you get
enlightenment after something like that. I think all anyone really
wants, if they're honest with themselves, is a quiet, easy life
surrounded by people that love them. Anything else is a conceit.
 -- OP from 99chan
%
Overcast nights are beautiful; the sun, mostly set, a near full moon
partially risen, light pollution from the city, and the sky delicately
purpleorangegray, as if it were a livid bruise.
%
The terrorist's job is to terrorize the people, to interfere with
freedom in such a way that disrupts ordinary life and commerce. With
due respect, it is clear that the above referenced governmental
agencies are aiding the terrorists' objective.
 -- Gary Fielder in Gary Fielder vs Janet Napolitano et al.
%
[C]haos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought.
It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
 -- Terry Pratchett _Interesting Times_ p4
%
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
 -- W. S. Merwin "Poetry in Motion" p107
%
Logs drowse in the pond
Dreaming of their heroes
Alligator and crocodile
 -- Vern Rutsala "Poetry in Motion" p77
%
Once, our bodies were bells:
Simply moving in the wind
We tolled our names.
 -- Phillis Levin "Poetry in Motion" p55
%
It's brief and bright, dear children; bright and brief.
Delight's the lightning; the long thunder's grief.
 -- John Frederick Nims "Poetry in Motion" p31
%
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
 -- Margaret Atwood "Poetry in Motion" p140
%
I stared at the mountain rising over me. Empty. It was a pointless
thing to have done -- climb up it, across it, and down it. Stupid! It
looked perfect; so clean and untouched, and we had changed nothing.
[...] I had been on it too long, and it had taken everything.
 -- Joe Simpson "Touching the Void" p117
%
Have you ever noticed: the most vocal superpatriots are the old men
who send young men out to die.
 -- Harlan Ellison "Basilisk" (_Deathbird Stories_ p73)
%
I finally developed
a computer with feelings.
It just doesn't have
feelings for me.
 -- a softer world #633
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=633
%
Live and learn
or die and teach by example
 -- a softer world #625
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=625
%
I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym
-- xkcd http://xkcd.com/917/
%
[I]t's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are
done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for
the best, especially if there is some god involved.
 -- Terry Pratchett _Snuff_ p185
%
"I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out
there." "There might as well be, [...] but most of it gets spent on
pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be
scraped together for particle accelerators."
 -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p262
%
"Do you need [...] [t]ools? Stuff?"
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. [...] We
have a protractor."
 -- Neal Stephenson _Anathem_ p320
%
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making
mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes
from being corrected.
 -- G. K. Chesterton "Illustrated London News (1924-04-19)"
%
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost
anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
 -- Robert Frost
%
Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur est qu'il soit un
maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
 -- Hector Berlioz
%
That's the wonderful thing about crayons. They can take you to more
places than a starship.
 -- Guinan "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Rascals (#6.7)"
%
He wore trifocals. There was stratigraphy even in his glasses.
 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p364
%
"Old hypotheses never really die, they're like dormant volcanoes."
 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p313
%
"While geologists argue, the rocks just sit there and sometimes they
seem to smile"
 -- John McPhee _Annals of the Former World_ p304
%
Thanks be to God, that he gave me Stubbornness, when I know I am right.
 -- John Adams (Letter to Edmund Jennings, 27 September 1782)