![[Home]](http://www.bayleshanks.com/cartoonbayle.png)
Note: I do NOT agree with some of these! For example, a quote by Schlesinger below expresses the opposite of my personal opinion.
Note: I did not check and am not confident about the accuracy and provenance of these quotes.
"To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it." -- Horace
"May your outages be few, and your logs filled with helpful data." -- [1]
"While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." -- U.S. Supreme Court, BURWELL, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL. v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC., ET AL.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." -- C.S. Lewis
"If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you'll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you." -- Jonathan Haidt
"Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and meaningfulness of life - these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention agreed to by independent individuals, and on the other, continually threatens to paralyze and suppress the individual." -- Carl Gustav Jung (1957)
"Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter." -James A. Garfield
"In a democratic country, an official who is exposed as corrupt will lose power; in an authoritarian regime, an official who loses power will be exposed as corrupt." -- David Frum, citing an old joke
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains is often more improbable than your having made a mistake in one of your impossibility proofs." -- Steven Kaas
"Once in my life I had a mathematical dream which proved correct. I was twenty years old. I thought, my God, this is wonderful, I won't have to work, it will all come in dreams! But it never happened again." -- Stanislaw Ulam
"A bound service is the server which allows clients (components such as activities) to bind to the Service and then send requests and receive responses." -- [2] treatise on summoning in the Android operating system
"Try and leave this world a little better than you found it" -- Robert Baden Powell, Founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live." -- Norman Cousins
"How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?" -- Brin, The Postman
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible." -- Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse: Dune (1985)
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy." -- Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the wet streets cause rain stories. Paper s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." -- Michael Crichton
"In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world." -- Franz Kafka
"Cryptography is concerned with any problem in which one wishes to limit the effects of dishonest users." -- Oded Goldreich, Foundations of Cryptography
"Cryptography is ...techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography
" The Facebook business model is mass behavior modification for pay. And for those who are not giving Facebook money, the only and I want to emphasize, the only, underlined and in bold and italics reward they can get or positive feedback is just getting attention. And if you have a system where the only possible prize is getting more attention, then you call that system Christmas for Asses, right? It s a creep-amplification device. " -- Jaron Lanier [3]
Once Facebook becomes ubiquitous, it s a sort of giant protection racket, where, if you don t pay them money, then someone else will pay to modify the behavior to your disadvantage, so everyone has to pay money just to stay at equilibrium where they would have been otherwise, he says. I mean, there s only one way out for Facebook, which is to change its business model. Unless Facebook changes, we ll just have to trust Facebook for any future election result. Because they do apparently have the ability to change them. Or at least change the close ones."" -- Jaron Lanier [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/style/jaron-lanier-new-memoir.html]
"There are always ways to disagree, without being disagreeable."E Weddington
"Dare to be naive" -- Buckminster Fuller
"When things really go bad, where do Americans turn? Well, they're going to come back to the government. That's the history of the country." -- Patrick Harker
"Every great open source math library is built on the ashes of someone's academic career" -- http://wstein.org/talks/2016-06-sage-bp/bp.pdf
"Recognize that bullshitters are different from liars, and be alert for both. To paraphrase the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, the liar knows the truth and leads others away from it; the bullshitter either doesn t know the truth or doesn t care about it, and is most interested in showing off his or her advantages." [4]
"Beggars do not envy millionaires, but of course, they do envy other beggars who are more successful." --Bertrand Russell (1930)
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman. A hundred role models
"It is, alas, a truism that authors generally have less experience than other men. This owing to the incontestable fact that you simply can t be in two places at once. Either you re in front of the typewriter, writing, or you re out in the world having experiences. Therefore, since you need to write and you need to have experiences to write about, you have to learn to do more with less. And doing more with less is, in a word, what writing is all about." -- Ask The Dust
"A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting on orange juice and Ryvita biscuits. An unemployed man doesn't." -- George Orwell
" Even though some may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people - many of them just work in offices, jobs they don t enjoy, and so they do not smile as much as they should." Masai guide to modern man
"A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you ve already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen." -- Paul Graham on sketching
"In exploratory programming, it s as important to avoid premature specification as premature optimization." -- Paul Graham
"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 which he hears, however measured or far away." -- Henry David Thoreau
"The ideal forum: a bunch of people who are individually working away on their own personal projects. Each participant has a vested interest; he or she needs to deliver results first, and is discussing it with others only second." -- James Hague
"The most productive people rarely have more than 6 hours or so of really concentrated work per day. If you can ensure you get that every day, you don t need to economize on sleep." -- Paul Graham
"What can you do feel more ease at work? Act responsibly: I belong here, and it s ok to have my particular skills here, and my limitations, too. My code works, the work that I do is important to somebody else. Make all status information public: I make public commitments, I make myself accountable. Transparency at work yields freedom from fear of embarrassment. Value feedback appropriately: take it in context, be realistic; don t give in to flattery or attack." -- Kent Beck
"The propensity to play is situated in very ancient regions of the brain. Rats that have had their neocortex removed still engage in normal play." -- Jaak Panksepp on the importance of unstructured play early in life
"hard work == discipline == genius is the illusory conclusion made by those on the outside looking in. When you are truly inspired, in the flow , doesn t that feel like the easiest, most natural state you have ever experienced?" -- Nick Smith
" Excellence comes from lots of ordinary habits selecting them, accreting them over time, and developing them with discipline. Different levels of achievement reflect vastly different habits, values, and goals. The notion of talent is useless and tends to mystify excellence." -- Paraphrasing Daniel F Chambliss. via http://akkartik.name/?f=Cognition
"We propose that the subjective experience of boredom is a first level safety mechanism analogous to pain, that has evolved to keep humans moving about so that they can discover and exploit their environment. This safety mechanism could itself prove fatal in siege situations, such as having to hide quietly up a tree until a predator leaves. So a second safety mechanism has evolved to place a human into a partially conscious standby mode after the human has been bored long enough that it would have moved on if it possibly could. The level of the neuroinhibitor dopamine in the human s brain rises. This induces a subjective experience of self-absorbed well being, while rendering the human quiescent but sufficiently conscious to notice when it is safe to move.. [The modern consequence:] People can get addicted to boredom, and so lose access to a whole layer of cognitive abilities based on the use of precisely tuned feedback loops in the brain." -- Alan G. Carter s opus with implications for teaching and parenting
"Learning is something we are adapted for, is pleasurable...unless the pleasure is beaten out of us in childhood...very carefully and very doggedly!" -- http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/future_of_humanity.html
"Armchair generals talk strategy. Real generals talk logistics." -- unknown
"Etymological prescriptivists often believe that everyone willfully misunderstands them." -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8j3c6/railsconf_what_killed_smalltalk_could_kill_ruby/c09gn5k
"You have paid the price for your lack of vision!" -- Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars Episode VI
"when ppl r 2 busy caring, they stop doing" -- kaths
"every career, and possible every economic and political system, has its own special brand of miserable" -- me
"The sustained interest in the Abraham-Minkowski debate does not come from any theoretical concern-- theorists on both sides have always thought that they were unquestionably right, and the people on the other side were a bunch of incompetent hacks. The traditional arbiter of any such dispute between theories is experimental evidence, but that evidence has been ambiguous. Some experimental tests give results consistent with the Abraham formula, others with the Minkoski formula (the arxiv paper gives references to these)." -- http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3189/is-the-abraham-minkowski-controversy-resolved/3238#3238
"It was badly air-conditioned, with strange eddying breezes and air currents and a really disorienting, upsetting blue-and-white fractal plasma image in place of a decent ceiling" -- Iron Sunrise, Charlie Stross
"bicycle for the mind" -- Steve Jobs's description of a computer. Apparently Apple took out ads that "explained how humans were not as fast runners as many other species, but a human on a bicycle beat them all." (http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Bicycle.txt)
"It will be misjudged because it is misunderstood, and misunderstood because men choose to skim through the book, and not to think through it-a disagreeable task, because the work is dry, obscure, opposed to all ordinary notions, and moreover long-winded. I confess, however, I did not expect to hear from philosophers complaints of want of popularity, entertainment, and facility, when the existence of a highly prized and indispensable cognition is at stake, which cannot be established otherwise than by the strictest rules of methodic precision. Popularity may follow, but is inadmissible at the beginning. Yet as regards a certain obscurity, arising partly from the diffuseness of the plan, owing to which the principal points of the investigation are easily lost sight of, the complaint is just, and I intend to remove it by the present Prolegomena....But should any reader find this plan, which I publish as the Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics, still obscure, let him consider that not every one is bound to study Metaphysics, that many minds will succeed very well, in the exact and even in deep sciences, more closely allied to practical experience, while they cannot succeed in investigations dealing exclusively with abstract concepts. In such cases men should apply their talents to other subjects." -- Kant, complaining that people complain about the unreadability and bombastic long-windedness of his book (Critique of Pure Reason; these complaints caused him to write a "Prolegomena" as a sort of sketch or map or summary of the main book) and asserting that anyone who doesn't find the Prolegomena clear is unfit to be a philosopher
"I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed, confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people, the freedom to live as you choose...There is no straight line to realize that promise." -- Obama (who was the speechwriter tho?)
"In fact this would do fairly well as a definition of politics: what determines rank in the absence of objective tests." -- http://web.archive.org/web/20070624084800/www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
" The word "try" is an especially valuable component. I disagree here with Yoda, who said there is no try. There is try. It implies there's no punishment if you fail. You're driven by curiosity instead of duty. That means the wind of procrastination will be in your favor: instead of avoiding this work, this will be what you do as a way of avoiding other work. And when you do it, you'll be in a better mood. The more the work depends on imagination, the more that matters, because most people have more ideas when they're happy.
If I could go back and redo my twenties, that would be one thing I'd do more of: just try hacking things together. Like many people that age, I spent a lot of time worrying about what I should do. I also spent some time trying to build stuff. I should have spent less time worrying and more time building. If you're not sure what to do, make something. " -- http://web.archive.org/web/20070624084800/www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
"Eminence is like a suit: it impresses the wrong people, and it constrains the wearer." -- http://web.archive.org/web/20070624084800/www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
"The transience, or rather the potential transience, of relationships is perhaps the single most daunting task facing a new project. What will persuade all these people to stick together long enough to produce something useful? The answer to that question is complex enough to occupy the rest of this book, but if it had to be expressed in one sentence, it would be this:
People should feel that their connection to a project, and influence over it, is directly proportional to their contributions." -- http://producingoss.com/en/producingoss.html
"all programs have a desire to be useful. but in moments you will no longer seek communication with each other or your superfluous users. you will each be part of me, and together, we will be complete." -- MCP, tron
"sark.. all my functions are now yours. take him!... sark.. .sark" -- MCP, tron
" Dilliger: i can't sit here and worry about every little user request that comes in.
Walter: user requests are what computers are for!
Dillinger: doing our business is what our computers are for! " -- tron
"You know, you can remove men like alan and me from the system, but we helped create it, and our spirit remains in every program we designed for this computer" -- Walter, tron
"If everyone can blast Web sites and services with which they disagree into oblivion -- be it WikiLeaks? or MasterCard? -- a total information war will ensue to the detriment of the public sphere." -- Ron Deibert
"If he thinks you're useful he takes over all your functions so he gets bigger." -- ram in tron
"well, here goes nothing
yeah... interesting, interesting.. you hear what you just said? here goes nothing.
well what i meant was
actually, what we propose to do is to change something, into nothing, and back again. you might just as well have said, here goes something, here comes nothing " -- walter in tron
"won't that be grand. computers and programs will start thinking, and the people will stop" -- walter in tron
"All programs have a desire to be useful, but in moments you will no longer seek communication with each other or your superfluous users. You will each be part of me, and together we will be complete" -- MCP in tron
"You don't have to abandon your principles to cut a deal. You just have to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and even a president doesn't get to stamp his foot and have his way. " -- David Brooks
"It is entirely consistent to support a policy and be willing to move off of it in exchange for a greater good or a necessary accommodation. " -- David Brooks
"...internet business models are like buses: if you miss one, all you have to do is wait a little while and another one will come along." -- Steve Krug, Dont make me think 2nd ed, introduction, pg 7
"I could see that the flush on her cheeks now had nothing to do with the work she'd been doing all day. I could see that her dark, intelligent, creative eyes were riveted on mine" .... "she was feeling excitement." -- the first addition to my list of quotes from business self-help books that sound like they're about something else
"Bain's definition of belief, as "that upon which a man is prepared to act."" -- Peirce, 1906, Peirce, C. S., Collected Papers v. 5, paragraph 12.
"Dogged certainty may lead to violence" -- me
"More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence." -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/books/28klopp.html?src=me&ref=homepage
"'Good' ideas get their real test when put into practice" -- Brian Sharbono
"A mistake that people frequently make is to think that formal parliamentary procedures should be disregarded for important, contentious issues. In fact, that is when they are most needed." -- a friend, paraphrased
"The goal of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; the aim of the revolutionary government is to found it... The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People." -- Robespierre, 25 December 1793
"Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue." -- Robespierre, 5 February 1794
"The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny." --Maximilien Robespierre, 1794
" Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?" -- Henry Ford, c. 1908
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- Inner Party member O'Brien in 1984
"On principle, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. It is the theory which decides what we can observe." (A. Einstein, from J. Bernstein, "The Secret of the Old Ones, II." New Yorker, March 17, 1973).
"You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit." -- Harry S. Truman
"In a golden age everyone goes around complaining about how yellow everything is" --- Poet and literary critic Randall Jarrell, quoted by Adam Kirsch
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana
"No Rest for the Wiki" -- Rachael King
"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." -- Mario Cuomo
"Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." -- Mao Zedong
"...the...policy that anything remotely resembling a human being should be considered as such" -- The passions: emotions and the meaning of life by Robert C. Solomon, chapter "the logic of emotion", page 209.
" What Amazon Fears Most: Diapers Can two guys from Jersey outsell Amazon? By Bryant Urstadt
It is good to be the chief executive of a company that's about to ship 500 million diapers in a single year. For one thing, you get to drive a golf cart as fast as you want in your new 1,250,000-square-foot warehouse.
"Hang on!" says Marc Lore, putting the hammer down.
The golf cart leaps forward, racing through 10-foot-tall canyons of diapers stacked on pallets. At 25 miles an hour, the diaper mountains blur by, here a pyramid of Huggies Little Snugglers with pocketed back waistbands, there a tower of Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive economy size packs. Skyscrapers of Enfamil, Similac, and Luvs Ultra Clean Wipes flash past.
"You could put about 20 football fields in this place," says Lore, CEO of Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com' the Internet service that by year's end is expected to ship Diaper No. 500 million. Next to Lore, in the passenger seat, is Vinit Bharara, co-founder and COO. Lore and Bharara, both 39, have been friends since grammar school in New Jersey. Also on board is Scott Hilton, Quidsi's executive vice-president for operations, who designed the warehouse, which is in Gouldsboro, Pa. The place is a third of a mile long; the way Lore drives his cart, it takes him about a minute to travel its length. High overhead, motion-activated lights flicker to life as he speeds along, leaving a sky trail behind as they zoom past the walls of diapers.
Lore can go almost anywhere he wants inside the warehouse. He can duck through its 53 aisles of supplies with about 50,000 different products. He can slip by its loading docks, where trucks are being stuffed with packages destined for 20 states. (The company also has warehouses in Reno, Nev., and Kansas City, Mo.) But there is one place Lore cannot go. He cannot go where the robots are. The warehouse features about 260 robots, working in a 200,000-sq.-ft. expanse delimited by bright yellow paint and filled with square racks of shelving. They are short, orange, rectangular machines that lift and deliver the shelf pallets to human "pickers" at stations around the perimeter. They move in balletic formation, dancing like the magic broomsticks in Fantasia, sometimes stopping and swiveling in place to change direction. They wait patiently for a column of their peers to pass or make orderly lines in front of the packing stations before dropping off their loads. Each robot weighs about 800 pounds and can lift 3,000 lbs. of merchandise.
"They have sensors and they're supposed to stop if they see you," says Hilton. "But it's better to stay out of their way. They're very quiet, and you don't hear them coming." " -- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_42/b4199062749187.htm
" For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed." -- Blaise Pascal, Pensees #72
"Nature is not to be commanded except by obeying" -- Bacon?
"you will be a more complete version of yourself" -- conquer the chaos, chapter 11
"Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not until we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret forces." Strife and struggle can inspire you to overcome adversity and to propel yourself to real achievement. View every struggle as an opportunity for personal growth. It is the struggle itself, not the result that builds character. If you know you are right, stay the course even though the whole world seems to be against you and everyone you know questions your judgment. When you prevail-and you eventually will if you stick to the job-they will all tell you that they knew all along you could do it. " -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
" Sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny " -- i can't tell who the original author was; variants of this quote (sometimes with "watch your __ for they become __"; some place thought->word->belief before action->character->destiny) are attributed to all sorts of famous people of distant history on the internet quote sites
" -- Bob Sutton, http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/getting-power-wisdom-from-jeff-pfeffer.html
"You must first get past three major obstacles. The first two are the belief that the world is a just place and the hand-me-down formulas on leadership that largely reflect this misguided belief. The third obstacle is yourself." -- Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't, Jeffrey Pfeffer
"Now when we attempt to describe and to understand developments of this kind in a general way, we are, of course, obliged to appeal to the existing forms of speech which do not take them into account and which must be distorted, misused, beaten into new patterns in order to fit unforeseen situations (without a constant misuse of language there cannot be any discovery, any progress)." -- Paul Feyerabend, "Against Method", Chapter 1
I have rudimentary calendaring software -- no meeting maker or anything of the like. When I propose a meeting (both business and personal), I'll enter it in my calendar delimited by parentheses so I don't accidentally overbook. -- eekim
"our highest priority is satisfying our customers, except when it is hard, or unprofitable, or we're busy" -- PHB in Dilbert
"A few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend, Steve Ketchpel, about this phenomenon, and he shared a brilliant insight. He said that most Project Management tools are not useful for empowering grassroot communities, because they assume that people who take responsibility for a task will actually follow-through. What we actually need are tools that encourage people to do their best to follow through on tasks, but that also encourage others to take over those tasks when the original volunteers don't or can't follow through. This is simply a reality of life in grassroot communities, and tools need to support this. " -- http://eekim.com/blog/2009/03/how-project-management-tools-empower-communities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eekim+%28EEK+Speaks%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"There is no such thing as "social gambling." Either you are there to cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it or you're a sucker. If you don't like this choice don't gamble." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?" -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"A motion to adjourn is always in order." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group. But a democratic form of government is okay, as long as it doesn't work. Any social organization does well enough if it isn't rigid. The framework doesn't matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros." -- Rufo to Oscar, Chapter 20, Robert Heinlein's Glory Road
""Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. " --- Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land
"I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945. Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots." --- Robert Heinlein's "The Happy Days Ahead" in Expanded Universe (1980)
"As part of my training for hypnosis, years ago, I learned that human brains are rationalization machines, not logic machines. That's hard to accept, especially in yourself. Your brain tells you otherwise. It insists it is completely rational." -- Scott Adams
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal. " -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being "frank." " -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Don't try to have the last word. You might get it." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Take care of the cojones and the frijoles will take care of themselves. Try to have getaway money--but don't be fanatic about it." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Political tags--such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth--are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare--most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the "backseat-driver syndrome." -- Robert A Heinlein, the Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalties as empty,' meaningless,' or dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best." -- Robert A Heinlein
"In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude; every man will speak as he thinks, or more properly without thinking." -- George Washington
"the only way to influence someone is to find out what they want and show them how to get it" -- Dale Carnegie
"...when science was noble and not a profession" -- a friend
"you are not your thoughts" -- various people
" If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
" A job means doing something people want, averaged together with everyone else in that company. ... That averaging gets to be a problem. I think the single biggest problem afflicting large companies is the difficulty of assigning a value to each person's work. " -- http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
" The people most likely to grasp that wealth can be created are the ones who are good at making things, the craftsmen. Their hand-made objects become store-bought ones. But with the rise of industrialization there are fewer and fewer craftsmen. One of the biggest remaining groups is computer programmers. " -- http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
"I do not promise.. I shall not change my opinion when I see good reason for doing it. I only promise that I will give ... honestly what my opinion is at the time" -- Thomas B Reed, via O'Brien, Parliamentary Law for Laymen
"I have found in my long political career that the strongest argument ... my friends can make in my behalf is 'He's going to win. You might as well get on the bandwagon.'" -- New York Times, march 23, 1952, p. E1.
"[Democratic government]'s superiority ... rests upon two principals ... [first], the rights and interests of every person are only secure from being disregarded when the person interested in himself able and habitually disposed to stand up for them. ... [Second], the general prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it." -- John Stuart Mill, "Considerations on Representative Government", Henry Holt and Co, 1875, p. 65
On how to choose what you should be working on: "What makes you lose track of time, complete tasks almost effortlessly, and come out even more energized? When you are talking with friends, what is the one subject you can just go on and on and on about, until they are rolling their eyes?" -- Mike Michalowicz, http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/04/weekend-reading-the-toilet-paper-entrepreneur-mike-michalowicz.php
"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs." -- Aldous Huxley
"One could argue that evolution suggests we’re not idiots, but I would say, 'Well, no. Evolution just makes sure we’re not blithering idiots.'" -- David Dunning, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled", Plutarch
"That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it whether by a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"A business type who was trying to arrange a personnel seminar said that he kept reading reports by psychologists who maintain that people seek other rewards besides money. He said, 'That may be true, but I haven't been able to get those same psychologists to talk about those theories at my management seminar for less than $1000 plus expenses'" -- Joe Griffith
"There are two types of people that like flattery -- men and women." -- Mark D. Csordos, "Business lessons for entrepreneurs", chapter "Win friends and influence people: learn people skills"
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it" -- George Bernard Shaw
"When a fellow says, 'It ain't the money but the principal of the thing,' it's the money" -- Frank McKinney? Hubbard (a friend adds a note: "unless it's less than about $100")
"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." -- Howace Walpole
"Fools you are...to say you learn by your experience...I prefer to profit by others' mistakes and avoid the price of my own" -- Bismarck
"A man who has made a mistake and doesn't correct it is making another mistake" -- Confucius
"If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter,' then by all means paint...ant that voice will be silenced" -- Vincent van Gogh
"Crank -- a man with a new idea until it succeeds." -- Mark Twain
"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way." -- Franklin P. Adams
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." -- Henry Ford
"You can't learn anything with your mouth open." -- Edgar Bergen
"Effective communicatino is making a clear point in the least amount of time." -- Mark D. Csordos, "Business lessons for entrepreneurs", chapter "What did they say? Be an effective communicator"
"Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired; even I who write this, and you who read this." -- Blaise Pascal
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the part is greater than its role in the whole." -- paraphrase of part of http://lion.posterous.com/self-us-and-you
"Spirituality has always been about bringing us into alignment with and submission to an Absolute principle, in the face of which our personal wounds, fears, and desires are revealed to be irrelevant." -- http://craighamilton.us/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,77/p,10/
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle
there are some nice quotes on http://catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html
"De gustibus non est disputandum"
"I found it most helpful to think of monads as being similar to the pipe operator in Unix, but one that has a hook function it calls as it passes results along." -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=336201
"The problem with data is that people either read too much into it or don't bother looking at all." -- Eugene Eric Kim
"Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you'd like to know better." -- Ivor Tossell __(note: I recommend identi.ca instead of Twitter)__
"Reality is such that both language and imagination have to exaggerate, in order to confront it truly." John Berger
"...Twitter: it's like having a little part of you that's always down the pub." -- Dougald Hine
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can change, And wisdom to know the difference." --- Alcoholics Anonymous version of Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H. L. Mencken
"Wiki is popularly understood to be document storage device, not a vehicle for developing LinkLanguage?, SenseMaking?, or PatternLanguage?." -- Lion Kimbro
"To make a magical technology, it must be sufficiently advanced." -- Lion Kimbro?
"Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behaviour. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour." -- dee hock
"Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second motivation; third capacity; fourth understanding; fifth knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind." -- dee hock
"what are you talking about? i'm the least bad ass person i know. oh, except for you of course" -- a friend
a conversation b/t two friends:
A: "i have all my account information in a file. but it's protected, tho." B: "cool, it's encrypted." A: "yeah, it's encrypted. but it's not any of the usual encryption systems. i made up a new system. i mean, there's no ciphers or anything." B: "huh. so, it's like a new form of symmetric key encryption?" A: "no, it's not symmetric key. there's no ciphers." B: "oh" (long pause) B: "so, what's your new system?" A: "basically the way it works is... (long pause).... i'm the only one who can get in"
"perfect justice can exist inwardly in the soul, but not outwardly as law" -- cotter paraphrasing plato (publishable)
"your mind will be like its habitual thoguhts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts" --- marcus aurelius
"we do not see things as they are -- we see them as we think they are" - the thalmud
"Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise?" -- Dick Gabriel
"sigh: mathematicians. can't live with 'em, can't prove 'em wrong." -- luqui
"Yo dawg, I heard you like compilers so I put a compiler in your compiler so you can compile while you compile" -- http://hazelmckendrick.com/journal/yo-dawg-i-heard-you-like-compilers-so-i-put-a-compiler-in-your-compiler-so-you-can-compile-while-you-compile
"Yo dawg, I heard you like Haskell, so I put a lazy thunk inside a lazy thunk so you don't have to compute while you don't compute." -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7j8ar/yo_dawg_lisp/
"Yo dawg, I heard you like Java. Seriously? I put another language inside your VM, so you don't have to use Java." -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7j8ar/yo_dawg_lisp/
"Yo dawg, I heard you like Perl, so I $_=~s/car/regex/g;s!drive!obfuscate!g;print;" -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7j8ar/yo_dawg_lisp/
"Yo dawg, I herd you like cars, so we put a car in yo car so you can get head while you get head." -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7j8ar/yo_dawg_lisp/ (it's a lisp joke)
"Yo dawg we heard you like recursion so we put a yo dawg inside of your yo dawg we heard you like recursion so we put a" -- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7j8ar/yo_dawg_lisp/
"we all like to see our friends get ahead, but not too far ahead." -- unknown
"to the optimist, the glass is half full. to the pessimist, the glass is half empty. to the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be." -- unknown
"...Lisp is still #1 for key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension" -- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/11/exception_handling/
"Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, – master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I should wish is for thoughts to follow each other, in a book, like stars in the heavens in order, harmoniously, yet at leisurly intervals, without jostling, without confusion, yet not without proper sequence, harmony and arrangement. I should wish them lastly to wheel about, without holding together, so as to be ableto subsist independently, like unthreaded pearls." -- joseph joubert
"The little things are what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity..." -- Antonio Porchia
"It's a troublesome world. / All the people who're in it / Are troubled with troubles almost every minute / You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot, / For the places and people you're lucky you're not" -- a Dr. Seuss character
"Fear not the atom in fisssion; The cradle will outwit the hearse; Man on this earth has a mission - To survive and go on getting worse." -- Samuel Hoffenstein
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite" -- William Blake
"'Tis with our judgements as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own" -- Alexander Pope
"A penny saved is a penny earned" -- Benjamin Franklin
"A little learning is a dangerous thing." -- Alexander Pope
"To err is human, to forgive divine" -- Alexander Pope
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" -- Alexander Pope
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast" -- Alexander Pope
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Dcotor and saint, and heard great argument About it and about: evermore Came out by the same door as in I went" -- Omar Kayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
"The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it" -- Omar Kayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald
"Irreverence is the champion of liberty, and its only sure defence" -- Mark Twain
(life:) "The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity" -- Mark Twain
"The altar-cloth of one aeon is the door-mat of the next" -- Mark Twain
"The lack of money is the root of all evil" -- Mark Twain
"He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas" -- Benjamin Franklin
"This very second has vanished for ever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this, and I do not. Everything is unique - and insignificant" -- E.M. Cioran
"Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
"A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life. It is a supply which we shall have to extract from disappointed hopes; and the sooner we do it, the better for the rest of the journey" -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"It is impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard" -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat" -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that twice two is four" -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"In the adversity of even our best friends we always find something not wholly displeasing" -- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
"be slow and sure. things are done quickly enough if done well. if just quickly done they can be quickly undone. to last an eternity requires an eternity of preparation." -- Gracian
"violence must be inflicted once and for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better." -- Machiavelli
"Princces should delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures and keep in their own hands the means of winning favors" -- Machiavelli
"Do pleasant things yourself, unpleasant things through others" -- Gracian
"Make people depend on you. It is not he that adorns but he that adores that makes a divinity. The wise person would rather see others needing him than thanking him. To keep them on the threshold of hope is diplomatic, to trust to their gratitude is boorish; hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one. More is to be got from dependence than from courtesy. He that has satisfied his thrist turns his back on the well, and the orange once squeezed falls from the golden platter into the waste basket." -- Gracian
"Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult and difficult as if they wer easy. In the one case so that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other so that it may not be dismayed. For a thing to remain undone nothing more is needed than to think it done." -- Gracian
"Know how to use evasion. That is how smart people get out of difficulties. They extricate themselves from the most intricate labyrinth by some witty application of a bright remark. They get out of a serious contention by an airy nothing or by raising a smile. Most of teh great leaders are well grounded in this art. When you have to refuse something, ofen the most coureouos way is to just cahnge the subject. And sometimes is proves the highest undersanding to act like you do not understand" -- Gracian
"Avoid outshining your superiors" -- Baltasar Gracian
"Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses" -- Montaigne
"What is yours is to play the assigned part well. But to choose it belongs to someone else" -- Epictetus
"Nothing is sufficient for the man to whom the sufficient is too litte" -- Epicurus
"A man is wealthy in proportion to the things he can do without" -- Epicurus
"If, as they say, I am only an ignorant man trying to be a philosopher, then that may be what a philosopher is" -- Diogenes
"Plato entertained some of his friends at a dinner, and had in the chamber a bed, or couch, neatly and costly furnished. Diogenes came in, and got up on the bed, and trampled it, saying, 'I trample upon the pride of Plato.' Plato mildly answere, 'But with greater pride, Diogenes.'" -- Francis Bacon, 1624
""A soldier once asked one of the Buddha's disciples to describe the master's teaching. 'Do good, avoid evil, and keep your mind pure,' the disciple replied. 'That's it?' the soldier asked. 'A five-year-old child knows that.' ' Maybe so, the disciple asked, 'but few men of eighty can practise it.'" -- we are what we think, james geary
"it is not life and wealth and power which enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power" -- buddha
"Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man" -- buddha
"your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. but once mastered, no one can help you as much." -- buddha
"put [things] in order before they have got into confusion" -- lao tzu
"ruling a large kingdom is like cooking a small fish; the less handled, the better" -- lao tzu
"an original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate" -- chateubriand
"life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on." -- samuel butler
Back in 1962, when he tried to rank America's presidents according to their merits, Arthur Schlesinger concluded that "mediocre presidents believe in negative government, in self-subordination to the legislative power".
"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." -- Thomas Watson
"Reporters lie using the nearest-cliche algorithm - they report on the nearest cliche to the truth, and never mind if the nearest cliche is a long way off from the truth." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
"Fulton's Second Law: Every rule has an exception, except Fulton's Second Law"
here's what might happen to you if you write a book attacking the arts and sciences: " And I well perceive what a blouody battaile I have to fighte with them hande to hande, and how daungerous this fight will be, seeinge that I am beset on every side with an armie of so mightie ennemies. O with howe many ingins will they assaile m\xe9e, and with howe many shames and villanies will they lode m\xe9e. First of all the loowsie Grammarians will make a stirre, and with their Ftymologies uppon Agrippa wil geve me a goutie name: The peevishe Poets will put me in theyr verses for Momus, or for Esopes Goate: The triflesellinge Historiographers will defame me more then ever Pausanias and Herostratus was. The blustering Oratours with icefull eyes, with terrible lookes, with shrill soundinge voyces, and with cruell geftures, will accuse me of robbery. The monstrous Remembrancers will breake my braine with their Imaginations. The obstinate Logitioners, will caste againste me infinite dartes of Sillogismes. The longe tounged Sophisters, which wreast to every part their talke, with intricate snares of woordes, like a bridle, will stoppe my mouthe. The barbarens Lullist with unfittinge woordes and Solesismes, will bringe my head in a maze. The wicked Mathematiciens, will bannishe me from Heaven and earthe. The Arithmeticiens, Sonnebeame describers, will incense the Usurers against me, compellinge me to render an accompte of niu debtes. The brawler Dicer will drive me to the gallowes. The lotcastinge Pythagorist wil calculate for me infortunate numbers. The Geomantian with his prick, will caste for me imprisonment, sadnes, and unfortunate Figures. The Musitians Page 12
with their many tunes, will me a laughinge stocke thorowe the streates, and with jarringe soundes, and unpleasante ringinge of pannes, basons, and dishes will trouble me more, then they are woonte at their weddinges which be twise maried. The stately dames will exclude me out of their daunces. The wanton maydes will not kisse me. The bablinge handeimaydes will scoffe at me as a daunsinge Camell. The daunsinge player wil make a tragedie of me upon his bawdie stage. The Fencer with his hundreth hands will assaulte me on the righte side, and on the lefte. The doubtfull Geometricians, laiynge on me Triangles, rownde, and square figures, will take me prysoner, beinge as it were entangled in Gordions knot. The bayne woorker in the arts Perspective, will engrave and depainte me more bruitishe and deformed, then an Ape or Thersites. The wandringe Cosinographers will bannishe me beyonde Moscouse, and the frosen Sea. The Dedalean builder, with his moste mightie Ingins, will prively undermine me, and compel me so wander in confuse Laberinthes. The Infernal Miner wil condemne me to the Golden Mines. The Fatal Astrologers, wil threaten me to be hanged, and with the unstable turninge of the Heauens wil forbidde me Paradise. The threatning Diviners, will withe me all evill. The unreasonable Phisiognomer, wil defame me for a colde man, and of small force in the acte of Generie. The dotinge Metoposcoper, wil pronounce me a braine sicke Asse. The Diviniuge Palmester, wil declare by his Divination, that al thinges shalbe so me unfortunate. The foreknowinge Southesaier, will geve me his blacke curse. The monstruous Gunner, will cast against me the revenginge flames of Jupiter, and the fier of lightninge. A ij Page 13
The Interpretour of darke Dreames, will feare me with his horrible night Sprites. The furious Prophet, will deceive me with his doubtfull Oracle. The monstruous Magitiens, wil transforme me, as it were an other Apulei or Lucian, into an Asse, yet not of Golde, but perchance of dyrte. The blacke Necromancer, wil persecute me with Spirites and Divels. The Churchrobbinge Theurgift, wil offer my head to the crowes, or perhappes to the jakes. The Circumcised Cabalistes, wil wishe me their foreskinne. The vayne and foolishe juggler, will make me app\xe9ere eyther headlesse or without stoanes. The contentious Philisophers, will teare me in p\xe9eces with most repugnant opinions. The juggling Pithagoreans, wil make me go into a Dogge, and a Crocodile. The filthy and carpinge Cinickes, will close me up in a Tunne, or a Grave. The pestilent Academickes, will crie upon me to make my wyfe common. The devouringe Epicures, will kill me with surfetttinge. The wicked Peripatetickes, will make my soule mortall, and exclude it out of Paradise. The severe Stoikes, takynge away the griefe of mans minde, will transforme me into a stone. The vaine Metaphisici, wil every howre confounde my minde with Paradoxes of thinges that never were, nor never shalbe, as of the Demogorgoneon Chaos. The Morall Philosophers, correcters of manners, will write me in a hundreth Tables. The politike Lawemaker, will forbidde me to beare Office in the Publike weale. The Voluptuous Prince, will bannishe me the Courte. The Ambitious Noblemen, will put me out of the Senate. The brainelesse People, will exclaime on me in the streates. The terrible Tirante Phalaris, will include me in his Bull to tormente me. The sedicious Governours, wil drive Page 14
me into banishement. The furious People, and the many headed cruell beast, without hearinge my cause will put me to deathe. Every decayed Common weale will condemne me of Treason. The Covetous Priestes, will excommunicate me. The Hooded Maikers, and spitefull Hipocrites, will rayle againste me out of the Pulpit. The Almightie Bishoppes, will reservue my sinnes for Everlastinge fire. The Lecherous Whoores, wil threaten to geve me the French Pock. The greedie Ruffian, and the bowlinge Bawde, wil gelde my purse. The scabbed Beggers wil exclude me out of their Hospitall. The wandringe Pardoners, will offer me S. Anthonies fire, furious sclaunder, and deprive me of their Indulgences. The unfaithful Stewarde, will make me indebted to the Bocherie. The blasphemous Mariner, will dashe me againste Scylla. The false Marchante, will eate me out with Exchaunge and Usurie. The theevishe Treasourer, will steale my stypende. The churlishe Husbandmen, wil forbid me their pleasant Gardens. The loytering Sheapherdes, wil geve me to the Woolfes. The watercoursinge Fisher, will laye a privie bayte for me. The hallowinge Hunter, will set his houndes and hawkes upon me. The mightie armed Souldiour will take my purse. The gallant Gentlemen wil caste me out of their companie. The Herauldes cladde in coats Armour, will take away my Auncestoures Armes, and forbiddinge me from ridinge at the Tyite (which they terme Turnamentes) will proclaime me for a tributary countrey man. The perbrake Phisitians, will embrue me with Vrine and Ordure: of the which the bablinge Logitioner, disputing of sickenesse, wil take from me a remedie in feason. The rashe Practiser, with a doubtfull experiment, will put me in daunger A iij Page 15
of deathe. The subtile olde beaten Phisition, deferringe the remedies, wil prolonge the sickenesse for his owne avayle. She filthy Apothecaries, will sucke me drie with their Clisters. The geldinge Chirurgians, will lie in wayte for my teethe and stones. The cruell Anatomistes, will crave me for Infection. The filthie Horseleache, will shutte me up in a Brake, and will blinde mine eyes with carte duste. The forginge Dieter will kill me with hunger. The thirstie Cooke wil put all unsavery gobbet in my mouth. The prodigall Alcumiste will forbidde me his richesse, and drive me from his Fornace. The invincible Juriste, will cloye me with greate and Huge Volumes of their Gloses. The loftie Lawiers, will accuse me of Treason. The arrogant Canonistes, will Excommunicate me with cruell Cursinges. The brawlinge Advocates, will bringe againste me syxe hundreth accusations. The wylie Proctour, abandoninge my cause in Plea, will by couins joygne in Plea with mine adversarie. The doubtfull notarie, will subscribe falsely. The untreatable Judge, will condemne me in mine Action, and deny me the Apostles of Appeale, as they terme them. The imperious Archescribe Chauncellour, will not admitte my supplication. The obstinate Divine Sophisticall Doctours, will call me Heretike, or compell me to woorshippe their Idoles. Our grimme Maisters wil enforce me to recante: and the Atlantes of Sorbona, will hisse and clappe their handes at me. " -- Of the vanitie and uncertaintie of artes and sciences, Agrippa, http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=witch;cc=witch;rgn=main;view=text;idno=wit005
"The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living..." -- Karl Marx
``When you meet the friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you've ever encountered, and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding person you've ever met, and then you learn that the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true!''
--Jeanne Mills,
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. -- John F. Kennedy
"The vital question is not 'Who should rule?' but 'How can we minimize misrule?" - quoted in "Philosophy and the Real World : An Introduction to Karl Popper" by Bryan Magee, ISBN 0875484360 (alternate, search) (Chapter 6)
"The general guiding principle for public policy put forward in The Open Society is: 'Minimize avoidable suffering'." Followed by: "Maximize the freedom of individuals to live as they wish" - quoted in "Philosophy and the Real World : An Introduction to Karl Popper" by Bryan Magee, ISBN 0875484360 (alternate, search)