Some of My Favorite Quotes

…in no particular order
['cept the newset ones will likely be first]….
For quotes about games, see the serious games pathfinder.
You might also try the Wikipedia Quotes: [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page]


Terry Pratchett's “The Last Continent”
“Some sheep had invaded his camp during the night. One of them was trying to get its mouth around an empty beer tin. It stopped when it saw that he had woken up, and backed away a bit, but not too far, while fixing him with the penetrating gaze of a domesticated animal reminding its domesticator that they had a deal. ”


You can never rely on a horse that is educated by fear. There will always be something that he fears more than you. But, when he trusts you, he will ask you, what to do when he is afraid.

–Antoine de Pluvinel


No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller


“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.”

― Dalai Lama XIV


“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ~Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato ~400BC


Wolfgang Köhler's Chimpanzee
Animals can and do learn through play. When Sultan, a chimpanzee used by psychologist Wolfgang Köhler was presented with the problem of retrieving a banana that was out of reach, his curiosity and playfulness resulted in a fairly sophisticated solution (Köhler, 1963). According to the account given by Konrad Lorenz in Foundations of Ethology,

“The ape was confronted with the task of reaching a banana with implements comprising two hollow sticks. One stick had to be inserted into the other in order to afford a tool of sufficient length. As long as the ape's interest remained centered on the banana, he failed to find a solution. He persisted in attempting to reach the fruit with the longer of the two sticks. Only when he had given up and had turned his back on the banana goal, and had begun aimlessly to play with the two sticks, did he succeed in inserting the one into the other. The moment this happened, he realized instantly that he now had the instrument required and he used it to get the fruit.” (Lorenz, 1981, p.333) “It would seem that free play”, says Lorenz, “is the prerequisite for all truly creative processes, for those of human culture just as for those of evolution. … The research that humans do has its place somewhere along the ill-defined borderline between exploratory behaviour and play” (Lorenz, 1981, p.334)


Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can. Charles Handy


On Consultants (author unknown)
The Graybeard engineer retired and a few weeks later the Big Machine broke down, which was essential to the company's revenue. The Manager couldn't get the machine to work again so the company called in Graybeard as an independent consultant.

Graybeard agrees. He walks into the factory, takes a look at the Big Machine, grabs a sledge hammer, and whacks the machine once whereupon the machine starts right up. Graybeard leaves and the company is making money again.

The next day Manager receives a bill from Graybeard for $5,000. Manager is furious at the price and refuses to pay. Graybeard assures him that it's a fair price. Manager retorts that if it's a fair price Graybeard won't mind itemizing the bill. Graybeard agrees that this is a fair request and complies.

The new, itemized bill reads:
Hammer: $5
Knowing where to hit the machine with hammer: $4995


I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day. ~Peter Ustinov


I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. -Jessica Dovey (incorrectly attributed by many to MLK)


“Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead


“It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.” -Niccolo Machiavelli


“When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.” -Niccolo Machiavelli


“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - George Orwell (June 25, 1903 - Jan 21, 1950)


'Men have forgotten this truth,' said the fox. 'But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.' Antoine de Saint-Exupery


“In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” – Bertrand Russell


It is a perversely human perception that animals in their native habitat are running wild. ~Robert Brault


“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough” ~Albert Einstein


“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” ~Frank Zappa


“If a man smiles all the time, he's probably selling something that doesn’t work.” George Carlin


Art challenges technology, and technology inspires art. -John Lasseter.


Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986)

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” ― Desmond Tutu


He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer. - William Blake (1757-1827) Jerusalem


“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that” – Martin Luther King, Jr


“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.” — John Lennon


“What we think or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.” John Ruskin


“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill


“The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay


“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”James D. Miles


“It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life, gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.” -Unknown


“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi


Adrienne Rich: Lying is done with words and also with silence.


I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man - it is we.
- Konrad Lorenz


All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
-Arthur Schopenhauer


He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it. -Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321)


“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” –Friedrich Nietzsche


“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters.” ~ Rosa Luxemburg


“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” -Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)


“We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan.” -Irving Townsend.


“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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.” - C.S. Lewis


It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -Voltaire


“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. ” -Laurence J. Peter


“They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin


People too weak to follow their own dreams will always find a way to discourage others.


Those who are different change the world. Those who are the same keep it that way.


Be who you are and say what you think.
Those who mind don't matter.
And those who matter won't mind.
- Dr. Seuss


Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork? - Stanislaw J. Lec


To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. - Abraham Lincoln


You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims. - Harriet Woods


It is with narrow-souled people as it is with narrow-necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make pouring it out. - Alexander Pope (1688-1744)


It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. - Tom Stoppard


“You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing.” - (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, © run away from, and (d) rocks. - (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)


It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. *No one* ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. - (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)


“Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave,” said Vorbis. “So I understand,” said the Tyrant. “I imagine that fish have no word for water.” - (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)


We've reached a special place, spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically. - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean, Walt Disney Pictures, 2003


“While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.” Treatle nodded. “I hadn't looked at it like that,” he said, “But you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.” - Discworld scientists at work (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)


Never Judge a day by the Weather.


The best things in life aren't things.


Tell the truth - there's less to remember.


Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.


Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.


Age is relative - when you're over the hill you pick up speed.


There are two ways to be rich:
1. Make more,
and
2. Desire less.


Beauty is internal - looks mean nothing.


No rain; no Rainbow.


I used to think it was terrible that life was so unfair. And then I thought, “Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair; and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them.”

And so now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe. - Marcus Cole [Ranger, Babylon 5: A Late Delivery from Avalon [3.13]]


“The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.” -Benjamin Disraeli


“Only a mediocre man is always at his best.” -W. Somerset Maugham


“When people have trouble communicating, the least they can do is to shut up.” -Tom Lehrer


“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” -David Russell


“He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.” -William Drummond


“In the fight between you and the world, back the world.” -Frank Zappa


“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ” - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)


“Never mistake motion for action. ” - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)


“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” - Benjamin Franklin, 1759


“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. ” - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)


“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)


“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)


“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)


“The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs and ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved', the pig was 'committed'.” - unknown


“I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it.” - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)


“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” - Frank Zappa


“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” - Jimi Hendrix


“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. ” - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)


“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ” - Niels Bohr (1885-1962)


“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. ” -John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)


“In the end, everything is a gag. ” - Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)


I am not young enough to know everything.” -Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. ” -General George Patton (1885-1945)


“If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?” -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)


“Never mistake motion for action. ” - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)


“I think it would be a good idea. ” - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization


“After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. ” -Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)


“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them”. - Mark Twain (1835-1910)


William Shakespeare: “I dote on his very absence.”


Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): “I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”


It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. - G.K.Chesterton


There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. - G.K.Chesterton


When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. - George Bernard Shaw


Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior. - George Bernard Shaw


Of course, America has often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. – Oscar Wilde


Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. H.L.Menchen


Going to church no more makes you a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence F. Peter


“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.” – Theodore Isaac Rubin, MD


“We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of William Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that this is not true.” -Professor Robert Silensky, University of California


We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. - Mark Twain


Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. - Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519


Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. - Frederick Douglass


We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde


“I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so good.' I said, 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'


If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.


There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe. - Albert Einstein


You can have it fast, cheap or right. Pick two.


“Your friends may love you in private but your enemies will hate you in public.” – Mark Twain


Intelligence is like a river: the deeper it is the less noise it makes.


Maturity is knowing when to be mature.


The plural of anecdote is not data. - Roger Brinner


What is the difference between dogs and cats?
Dog: “They feed me, love me and take care of me: they must be gods!”
Cat: “They feed me, love me and take care of me: I must be a god!”


“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” - Oscar Wilde


“Computers are useless. They can only give answers.” - Pablo Picasso


“Getting a grasp on the Internet is like chasing a jello rattlesnake in a room full of Wesson oil. It's a great deal of good clean fun, but the snake is in no danger.” - Jack Rickard, Editor, Boardwatch


“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” - Unknown


If one person says you're a duck, he's crazy. If two people say you're a duck, it's a conspiracy. If three people say you're a duck, start looking for feathers on your butt.


“The ratio of horses asses to horses noses is not one to one.” - F.C. Hentz (NCSU Chemistry Prof.)


In a world without fences, who needs Gates?


A fanatic is someone who redoubles his effort when he's forgotten his aim. - Santayana


“`Begin at the beginning,' the King said, gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'” - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. - James Dean


“Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is lumpy and hairy and should not be seen by the light of day. Men are turned on at the sight of a naked woman's body. Most naked men elicit laughter from women.” - Dave Barry


Either that wallpaper goes or I do. - Oscar Wilde's last words


“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: the first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.” - Audrey Hepburn


When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box. - Italian Proverb


Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde


No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt


Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)


There are two things to aim for in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. - Logan Pearsall Smith


”[Literary-minded] men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs.“ - Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker


“Back in a minute” - Godot


“We are born nude and everything after that is drag.” - Ru Paul


“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” - Rachel Carson


Early to bed and early to rise, and you'll meet very few of our best people. – George Ade


“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.” - Isaac Asimov


“You can kill a thousand; you can bring an end to life; you cannot kill an idea.” - Acting Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres on the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995)


“The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.”


As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public school.


“The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it.” - U.S. Senator James Exon


Irony: God gave the turtle a drag coefficient of 0.3


Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. History simply documents the success of that approach.


For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. - Abraham Lincoln


Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky. - Rainer Rilke


When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. – Abraham Maslow


He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.


The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.


Genius may have it's limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. – Elbert Hubbard


All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. – Mark Twain


“When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” - Mark Twain


The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along. - Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See (1990)


When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Frank Herbert


For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken


Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.


Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. - Mark Twain


While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is admission to someone else.


Don't be humble, you're not that great. - Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan


G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home:
“Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy.”


The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful - Frederick Locker-Lampson


All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. - Sean O'Casey


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


O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?


Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. - Jules de Gaultier


Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.


Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.


There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic “bubbles”, electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business?


The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.


Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.

Dennis Wholey


“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” - John Lennon


“The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even heard. They must be found within the heart.” - Helen Keller


time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. - j lennon


“Live as one already dead.” - Japanese saying


“Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a difference between having an open mind and having holes in one's head?” - Richard Schultz, on soc.culture.jewish


“A room without books is a body without a soul” -Cicero, 106-43 BC.


“Words that emanate from the heart enter into the heart of another” - Midrash


“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any act of kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now, as I shall not pass this way again.” - William Penn


“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.” Nikola Tesla, 1926


“If you can't hack it, you don't own it.” Andrew ‘Bunnie’ Huang


“CS may be more than programming, but it is not less than programming” (Guntheroth, 2004)


“If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” (Edsger W. Dijkstra)


“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are–by definition–not smart enough to debug it.” (Brian Kernighan)


The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time. (Tom Cargill)


First, solve the problem. Then, write the code. (John Johnson)


That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. (Larry Niven)


The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late. (Seymour Cray)


There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'. (Edward Tufte)


There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone. (Bjarne Stroustrup)


The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple. (Grady Booch)


Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. (Brian Kernigan)


The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. (Henry Petroski)


I've finally learned what 'upward compatible' means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes. (Dennie van Tassel)


Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves. (Alan Kay)


The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. (Edsger W. Dijkstra)


C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; <html>C++</html> makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.”– Bjarne Stroustrup


“When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ”– Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)


“Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. ”– John von Neumann (1903-1957)


“University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. ”–Henry Kissinger (1923)


“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ”– Mark Twain (1835-1910)


“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. ”– Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977


“640K ought to be enough for anybody. ”– Bill Gates (1955), in 1981


“There is only one nature the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole. ”– Bill Wulf


“I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray.” - Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.


“I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.”–An English Professor, Ohio University


It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.– G.K.Chesterton


Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.– B.F.Skinner


We could define the intelligence of a machine in terms of the time needed to do a typical problem and the time needed for the programmer to instruct the machine to do it. - John Nash, 1954


“We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of William Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that this is not true.” -Professor Robert Silensky, University of California


if (you.canRead(this))
you.canGet(new job(!problem));


“I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so good.' I said, 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'


The Feynman problem solving Algorithm:
1. Write down the problem
2. Think real hard
3. Write down the answer


You can have it fast, cheap or right. Pick two.


Brevity is the soul of.


“The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911.” — The National Review


Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice. — Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual


The plural of anecdote is not data. — Roger Brinner


“Computers are useless. They can only give answers.” — Pablo Picasso


To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.


“Getting a grasp on the Internet is like chasing a jello rattlesnake in a room full of Wesson oil. It's a great deal of good clean fun, but the snake is in no danger.” — Jack Rickard, Editor, Boardwatch


unzip ; strip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep


“Check your writing to see if you anything out.” — F.C. Hentz (NCSU Chemistry Prof.)


Recursion is a funny thing, recursion is.


“The ratio of horses asses to horses noses is not one to one.” — F.C. Hentz (NCSU Chemistry Prof.)


In a world without fences, who needs Gates?


G-d is real, unless declared integer.


666 The Number of the Beast
666.0000 The Number of the Beast (high precision)
666 AM WBST Radio: All Beast, All the Time
333 Eric the Half-A-Beast
1010011010 The Binary of the Beast
$333.00 Half-price Beast during January Clearance Sale
2, 3, 3, 37 The Factors of the Beast
2, 4, 666, 8 “Who do we abominate? GooooOOO, Beast!!!”
666-1 The Imaginary number of the Beast
666i The BMW of the Beast
668 The Neighbor of the Beast
DCLXVI The Roman Numeral of the Beast
<html></html> The Beast with shift key applied

UNIX: Functionality is its own sufficient beauty.


“There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.” – Jeremy S. Anderson


“The essential point in science is not a complicated mathematical formalism or a ritualized experimentation. Rather the heart of science is a kind of shrewd honesty that springs from really wanting to know what the hell is going on!” – Saul-Paul Sirag


If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe. – Carl Sagan


A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, “The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat.”


The architect did not agree. He said, “But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect.” The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, “Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?”


A palindrome:
Retteb sif lahd, noces ehttub, but the second half is better.


“UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.” – Doug Gwyn


Bus Error – Please Take The Train.


As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public school.


“The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it.” – U.S. Senator James Exon


Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?


Usenet is essentially a HUGE group of people passing notes in class. – R. Kadel


Irony: God gave the turtle a drag coefficient of 0.3


“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is a big difference.”


A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.


When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. — Abraham Maslow


The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) But “That's funny …” – Isaac Asimov


“Insofar as the laws of mathematics are certain, they do not refer to reality; and insofar as they refer to reality, they are not certain.” – Einstein


Genius may have it's limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. — Elbert Hubbard


C Code
C Code Run
Run Code, RUN!
PLEASE!!!


Practice safe hex, wear a write-protect tab


I tell my students that artificial intelligence is a property that a machine has if it astounds you. – Herbert Freeman


For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. – H. L. Mencken


If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

Don Marquis, US humorist (1878 - 1937)


An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.


Atilla The Hun's Maxim: If you're going to rape, pillage and burn, be sure to do things in that order. – P. J. Plauger, Programming On Purpose, p147


A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard – Prof. Steiner


Engineering: “How will this work?”
Science: “Why will this work?”
Management: “When will this work?”
Liberal Arts: “Do you want fries with that?”– Jesse N. Schell


Computation is the art of carefully throwing away information.


The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change. – FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers


Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.


There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic “bubbles”, electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business?


”… One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.“ – Robert Firth


“If it's not on fire then it's a software problem.”


“There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count and those who can't.”


They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. -Sir Francis Bacon


“The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.” ― Freeman Dyson


“Appropriate practice is the single most neglected aspect of effective instruction.” (Merrill, 2001, p.464)


It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. —A.N.Whitehead (1861-1947) British Philosopher


Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof. —Martin H. Fischer (1879-1962)


One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. —Andre Gide (1869-1951) French Novelist


The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. —Thorstein Veblen (1857-1947) US Social Scientist


We should take care not to make intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. —Albert Einstein


“While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.” Treatle nodded. “I hadn't looked at it like that,” he said, “But you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.” - Discworld scientists at work (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)


“When people have trouble communicating, the least they can do is to shut up.” –Tom Lehrer


“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” —- Frank Zappa


“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” —- Jimi Hendrix


“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. ” —- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)


“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ” —- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)


“When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ” —- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)


“University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. ” —- Henry Kissinger (1923)


“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ” —- Mark Twain (1835-1910)


“There is only one nature the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole. ” —- Bill Wulf


“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them”. —- Mark Twain (1835-1910)


“I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.” —- An English Professor, Ohio University


Galileo Galilei (1564-1642):
“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”


It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. —- G.K.Chesterton


Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten. —- B.F.Skinner


We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. - Mark Twain


Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. - Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519


There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe. - Albert Einstein


The Feynman problem solving Algorithm:
1. Write down the problem
2. Think real hard
3. Write down the answer


You can have it fast, cheap or right. Pick two.


Brevity is the soul of.


Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl. - Mike Adams


Intelligence is like a river: the deeper it is the less noise it makes.


The plural of anecdote is not data.- Roger Brinner


“Check your writing to see if you anything out.” - F.C. Hentz (NCSU Chemistry Prof.)


“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.” - Unknown


“I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.”- Unknown


“The essential point in science is not a complicated mathematical formalism or a ritualized experimentation. Rather the heart of science is a kind of shrewd honesty that springs from really wanting to know what the hell is going on!” Saul-Paul Sirag


If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe.- Carl Sagan


A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, “The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat.”

The architect did not agree. He said, “But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect.”

The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, “Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?”


Irony: God gave the turtle a drag coefficient of 0.3


In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. ( big bang theory ).


A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.


When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. - Abraham Maslow


The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) But “That's funny …”- Isaac Asimov


“Insofar as the laws of mathematics are certain, they do not refer to reality; and insofar as they refer to reality, they are not certain.”- Einstein


“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is a big difference.”


Genius may have it's limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. - Elbert Hubbard


For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. H. L. Mencken


“A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is longer than any hour. That's relativity.” Einstein


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


First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.


Engineering: “How will this work?”
Science: “Why will this work?”
Management: “When will this work?”
Liberal Arts: “Do you want fries with that?”
- Jesse N. Schell


Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.- Jules de Gaultier


There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all?


Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.


Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.


The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.


“It's easier said than done.”

… And if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that “it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done”, which really proves that “it's easier said than done”.


QUIDQUID LATINE DICTUM SIT,PROFUNDUM VIDITUR: “If you say it in Latin, it looks more profound”


“Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a difference between having an open mind and having holes in one's head?”- Richard Schultz, on soc.culture.jewish


I tell my students that artificial intelligence is a property that a machine has if it astounds you.- Herbert Freeman


“There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count and those who can't.”


If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you.


A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard- Prof. Steiner


Engineering: “How will this work?”
Science: “Why will this work?”
Management: “When will this work?”
Liberal Arts: “Do you want fries with that?”
- Jesse N. Schell


Conformity is the disease. Rebellion is the cure.


I didn’t say it was your fault… I said I was going to blame you.


I don’t know what makes you so dumb, but it really works.


I’m sorry. My fault. I forgot you were an idiot.


I’d love to have a battle of wits with you… but you appear unarmed.


The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on my list.


From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. ” - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)


“The covers of this book are too far apart. ” - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)


“If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?”- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)


Some Important Signs:


Sign seen at a urinal: “Get closer, it's not as long as you think/wish it is”


Sign behind counter at video rental store: “We are sorry to report that we are ALL out of 'That Movie With That Guy Who Was in That Other Movie'. There was some confusion when ordering from our distributor.-Thank You


Door of a plastic surgeon's office : Hello, can we pick your nose?


At a car dealership in Maryland to announce new seat belt legislation: “Belt your family. It's the law.”


At an office: “This job is only a test had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, bonuses and promotions.”


On a bumper sticker: “Take my advice, I'm not using it”


Sign on back of water carrier truck: “CAREFUL, you are now passing water!”


This is a bumper sticker on a pickup truck here in Houston: “It's time to pull over and change the air in your head.”


Golf is a good walk spoiled. - Mark Twain


German is a language which was developed solely to afford the speaker the opportunity to spit at strangers under the guise of polite conversation. - National Lampoon


Winston, if I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee. - Nancy Astor
Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it. - Winston Churchill


Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -H.L.Menchen


Going to church no more makes you a Christian than going to the garage makes you a car. - Laurence F. Peter


Winston, you are drunk.
Besse Braddock, MP
Indeed, Madam, and you are ugly. But tomorrow I'll be sober.
Winston Churchill


Bite the wax tadpole.
Coca-Cola rendered phonetically into Chinese.


“We have all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of William Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know that this is not true.” - Professor Robert Silensky, University of California


When a six-foot-long eel
wants to nibble your heel,
that's a moray.


“I picked up a Magic 8-Ball the other day and it said 'Outlook not so good.' I said, 'Sure, but Microsoft still ships it.'


If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?


The plural of anecdote is not data. - Roger Brinner


What is the difference between dogs and cats?
Dog: “They feed me, love me and take care of me: they must be gods!”
Cat: “They feed me, love me and take care of me: I must be a god!”


I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. - Gilda Radner


The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me! - Nicol Williamson


On the other hand, you have different fingers.


Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage


What did the Zen student say to the hot dog vendor?
“Make me one with everything.”
What did the hot dog vendor say?
“What'll you carry it in?”
And the mustard was enlightened.


Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.


“Contrariwise”, continued Tweedledee, “If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.” - Lewis Carroll


“The ratio of horses asses to horses noses is not one to one.” - F.C. Hentz (NCSU Chemistry Prof.)


“`Begin at the beginning,' the King said, gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'” - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


“Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is lumpy and hairy and should not be seen by the light of day. Men are turned on at the sight of a naked woman's body. Most naked men elicit laughter from women.” - Dave Barry


Either that wallpaper goes or I do. - Oscar Wilde's last words


“I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.” - Unknown


Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde


”[Literary-minded] men choose Hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch. Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs.” - Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker


“Back in a minute” - Godot


A palindrome: Retteb sif lahd, noces ehttub, but the second half is better.


Bus Error – Please Take The Train.


Early to bed and early to rise, and you'll meet very few of our best people. - George Ade


“To Do Is To Be” - Descartes
“To Be Is To Do” - Sartre
“Do Be Do Be Do” - Sinatra
“Do be a Doobee” - Miss Ann [Romper Room]


Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.


As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public school.


Irony: God gave the turtle a drag coefficient of 0.3


Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. History simply documents the success of that approach.


For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. - Abraham Lincoln


In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. ( big bang theory ).


A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.


To err is human, to moo bovine.


Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial “we.” - Mark Twain


“When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” - Mark Twain


Carpe Diem - Seize the day
Carpe Noctum - Seize the night
Sharpei diem - Seize the Wrinkle Dog.
Carpin Denium - there's a fish in my pants


When I said “we”, officer, I was referring to myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat.


Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. - Mark Twain


Don't be humble, you're not that great. - Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan


G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home:
“Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy.”


Cows in Space. The herd shot around the world.


Everyone talks about apathy, but no one does anything about it.


All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. - Sean O'Casey


O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?


There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all?


“Gentlemen! You can't fight in here. This is the War Room.” - Dr. Strangelove


“It's easier said than done.”
… And if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that “it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done”, which really proves that “it's easier said than done”.


QUIDQUID LATINE DICTUM SIT,PROFUNDUM VIDITUR: “If you say it in Latin, it looks more profound”


Two cannibals were sitting by a fire. The first says, “Gee, I hate my mother-in-law.”
“So, try the potatoes.”


“Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a difference between having an open mind and having holes in one's head?” - Richard Schultz, on soc.culture.jewish


“Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read” - Groucho Marx


“Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.” - Groucho Marx


I cannot say that I do not disagree with you - Groucho Marx


Teaching should aim at disengaging and strengthening the pupil's individuality; at teaching him how, by studying the masters, he must learn not to ape them, but to study himself, as they have done. Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937) (source: Calvocoressi, 1913, p787)


When asked how he developed his mathematical abilities so rapidly, he replied “by studying the masters, not their pupils.” - Niels H. Abel (1802 - 1829) 1)


“The invention of new methods that are adequate to the new ways in which problems are posed requires far more than a simple modification of previously accepted methods.“ Vygotsky, from Mind in Society, 1977, p.58


“In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” Marshall McLuhan (1964, p.7)


A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein


“Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.” - Xun Kuang, circa 200 BC - See more at: http://www.gazettextra.com/weblogs/word-badger/2013/mar/24/whose-quote-really/#sthash.PUWBX2l0.Iv2SzFiS.dpuf


“In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.” ― Charles Sanders Peirce


“The best thing for being sad,“ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King


“The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. The will to learn becomes a “problem” only under specialized circumstances like those of a school, where a curriculum is set, students are confined, and a path fixed. The problems exist not so much in learning itself, but in the fact that what the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning.” (Bruner, 1966, p.127)


“(T)he central point of education is to teach people to think, to use their rational powers, to become better problem solvers.” Robert Gagné (1980, p. 85)


“instructional technology only works for some kids, with some topics, and under some conditions – but that is true of all pedagogy. There is nothing that works for every purpose, for every learner, and all the time.” (Mann, 2001, p. 241)


“If we teach today's students as we did yesterday's, we are robbing them of tomorrow.” — John Dewey


Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. - (Eric Raymond)


Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer deserves to be. ~ David Thornburg


“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.” ~ John F. Kennedy


Education is a sexual disease, IT makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you have the urge to pass it on. - Terry Pratchett


One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. - Sophocles


Never let school interfere with your education. - Mark Twain


Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them. - Madeleine L'Engle


In the schoolhouse, we have the heart of the whole society. - Henry Golden


We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves. - Galileo Galilei


There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it. - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky


Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path. - Carl Sagan


“Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has anything magical about it, but we cannot study the future.” - C.S. Lewis


They were majoring in two subjects: physics and philosophy. Their choice amazed everybody but me: modern thinkers considered it unnecessary to perceive reality, and modern physicists considered it unnecessary to think. I knew better; what amazed me was that these children knew it, too. - Ayn Rand


It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. - Alec Bourne


Vocational training is the training of animals or slaves. It fits them to become cogs in the industrial machine. Free men need liberal education to prepare them to make a good use of their freedom. -John Dewey, 1916


The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. - Friedrich Nietzsche


We need to consider whether we are educating children for their futures or our pasts. Geoff Southworth 2002


There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. Willa Cather (1915)


The will to learn is an intrinsic motive, one that finds both its source and its reward in its own exercise. The will to learn becomes a “problem” only under specialized circumstances like those of a school, where a curriculum is set, students are confined, and a path fixed. The problems exist not so much in learning itself, but in the fact that what the school imposes often fails to enlist the natural energies that sustain spontaneous learning. (Jerome Bruner, 1966, p.127)


The total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses, all are subsidiary to this. (William James, 1892)


Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favor of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes men to seek a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position… It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. Among children it is very common, and grows naturally out of the period of make-believe and fancy. It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during education… The wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. Education should not aim at passive awareness of dead facts, but at an activity directed towards the world that our efforts are to create. - Bertrand Russell


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


One learns more from a good scholar in a rage than from a score of lucid and laborious drudges. - Rudyard Kipling


I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Vincent Van Gogh


We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, that is, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, keep nothing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. - Kurt Vonnegut

“Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not. But if the grades are removed the class is forced to wonder each day what it’s really learning. The questions, What’s being taught? What’s the goal? How do the lectures and assignments accomplish the goal? become ominous. The removal of grades exposes a huge and frightening vacuum.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values


“What's the matter?” asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face.

“Why—why,” said Elizabeth Ann, “I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?”

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. “you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?” ― Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Understood Betsy


Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager. - John Taylor Gatto


“The invention of new methods that are adequate to the new ways in which problems are posed requires far more than a simple modification of previously accepted methods.“ Vygotsky, from Mind in Society, 1977, p.58


“Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can.” ~ Charles Handy


“(What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness) .Familiarity can blind you too.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values


“Comfort is a stance of avoidance rather than the pursuit of excellence.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough


“By choosing comfort we are in the very same decision choosing to miss every great thing in life, and that thought should be anything but comforting.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough


“The goal of comfort is at the self-same time the abandonment of great accomplishments.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough


“Familiarity can provide the misguided illusion of understanding. Assume nothing.” ― Truth Devour, Wantin

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” ― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility


People expect too much in one year, and not enough in ten. Sir Peter Molyneux


“With thousands of instructional computer games on the market, including popular titles such as Math Blaster, we know little about which features make an educational game good for learning. A survey of the past 20 years of educational publications reveals a rather sparse bounty, in particular if one is interested in hard-core academic benefits rather than motivational or social aspects of playing games for learning” (Kafai, 2006, p.37).


“So why don’t I like edutainment? The problem is with the way that creators of today’s edutainment products tend to think about learning and education. Too often, they view education as a bitter medicine that needs the sugar-coating of entertainment to become palatable. They provide entertainment as a reward if you are willing to suffer through a little education. Or they boast that you will have so much fun using their products that you won’t even realize that you are learning—as if learning were the most unpleasant experience in the world.

I also have a problem with word “edutainment” itself. When people think about “education” and “entertainment,” they tend to think of them as services that someone else provides for you. Studios, directors, and actors provide you with entertainment; schools and teachers provide you with education. New edutainment companies try to provide you with both. In all of these cases, you are viewed as a passive recipient. That’s a distorted view. In fact, you are likely to learn the most, and enjoy the most, if you are engaged as an active participant, not a passive recipient” (Resnick, M. 2004).


“A good game consists of a series of interesting and meaningful choices, made by the player in pursuit of a clear and compelling goal.” (Falstein, 2006)


“Comparing games to previous forms of media (which are, for the most part, linear experiences) can be both useful and dangerous. Useful, because by studying other forms, we get a good sense of what games are missing and how far they have to go in this important direction. Dangerous, because interactive entertainment is a fundamentally different proposition than its linear cousins, involving quite different psychological mechanisms.”(Wright, 2003, p.xxxii)

“This is important because this empathic ability we seem to exercise so seamlessly is also the psychological engine that drives the thing we call “story.” Story (in its many forms) seems to be an “educational technology” of sorts that we have developed over millennia that allows us to share experiences with one another across great distances of time and space. We can learn to avoid failures or achieve successes from people who are long dead across the world or who never existed at all. It's a technology that's entirely dependent on our ability to empathize with other beings.”(Wright, 2003, p.xxxii)

“Games, on the other hand are most directly dependent on something else entirely: the concept of agency. Agency is our ability to alter the world around us, or our situation in it. We are able to act, and that action has effects. This is probably the first thing we learn as babies. This is the crucial distinction between interactive and linear entertainment.” (Wright, 2003, p. xxxii)

“We often assume that stories told in one medium are intrinsically inferior to those told in another. Shakespeare and Jane Austin were once considered to be working in less legitimate formats than those used by Aeschylus and Homer. One hundred years after its invention, film art still occupies a marginal place in academic circles. The very activity of watching television is routinely dismissed as inferior to the act of reading, regardless of content.” (Murray, 1998, p.273)


“Typically, the actual source of the tension lies not in the new medium, but in preexisting social issues. The tensions over new media are surprisingly predictable, in part because the issues that drive them are enduring ones such as intra-class strife and societal guilt. Often, focusing attention on the medium is a convenient way of assigning blame while ignoring complex and troubling problems. Media coverage of new technology often generates a climate in which consumers of news media are terrified of phenomena which are unlikely to occur. Just as importantly, they are also guided away, purposefully or not, from complicated and troubling systemic social issues (Glassner, 1999).” (Williams, 2005a)


“Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primaeval soil of play.” (Huizinga, 1950, p.5)


“Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.”

Gareth Owen


“One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games. And it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.”

- Carl Gustav Jung

Laurens van der Post in Jung and the Story of Our Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), pp. 41 thanks to Chris Crawford for correcting the wording and Warren Spector for tracking down the source of the quote.


It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter. - Marshall McLuhan, from “Classroom Without Walls”, Explorations Vol. 7, 1957


You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -Plato


You can't steal second base and keep one foot on first.


You must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more readily the natural bent of their respective characters. - Plato


A Smith&Wesson *always* beats 4 aces.


We don't stop playing because we get old… we get old because we stop playing.


If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. -Chinese proverb


I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my life. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times I have been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again. That is why I succeed…

–Michael Jordan


A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

–WOPR - In the movie “War Games” after learning the futility of “playing” Global Thermonuclear War by playing a seemingly endless series of games of Tic-Tac-Toe with itself.


I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Igor Stravinsky


… but we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life.

Saint Augustine (AD 354 - 430) in his Confessions - Book I:10


Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

Ayn Rand, The Moratorium on Brains


That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

Richard Bach, note written by Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever


Games lubricate the body & the mind.

- Ben Franklin


It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

Michel de Montaigne


Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. Tom Robbins


“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. ” -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)


“The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911.” – The National Review


The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. —George Orwell


I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well. —Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94)


A man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science thinks, that by mouthing hard words, he proves that he understands hard things. —Herman Melville (1819-91)


“We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, 'You don't know what you are talking about!' The second one says 'What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?', and so on.” - Richard Feynman (1963)


You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing – that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. - Richard Feynman


The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something; and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium – in spectacle-cleaning – is a result of a philosophical mistake. - Sir Karl Popper


The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. ~Hippocrates


Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody. Thomas Earnest Hulme, Speculations, 1923


Rebecca: Words don't taste good, they don't smell good, they don't keep you warm at night, in fact, words never really leave the mind, do they? - Moonlight and Valentino (1995) (TV)


The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug. - Mark Twain


Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood. - William Penn


The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. - George Bernard Shaw


He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. - John Ray, naturalist


“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.”

I wanted to put some kind of quote from you on the page, because a lot of my mail is “Why does Harlan have this thing on the Web, he hates computers”.

People are always trying to prove that you are a hypocrite. They ask you questions, the answers to which…. “Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?”. This is a game people play. They want you to be consistent throughout your life.

The great art critic and philanthropist Bernard Berenson once said “Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago”. Now, once upon a time I was doing a book review of a very bad, very popular novel Love Story by Erich Segal, and people were very upset with me (I was on TV talking about it), and they kept saying, “Have you read it?” and if I said “No, it's such a piece of shit I wouldn't read it”, they would say “A-ha! Well then how can you comment on it if you haven't read it?”. Well, in fact, I read it.

So then when the movie came out and I was talking about how much more awful the movie was, that the movie would not only make you puke but give you diabetes as well, I went to see the film. I despised the film, it was a horrible film, but nonetheless, I did it.

When I reviewed television, people said “If you hate television so much, how come you've got a television set in your house?”. Stephen King even said “You know, Harlan's got a big TV.”. Yes, that's right. I try to be courant. I try to know what it is I'm talking about. I am not like many people who give you an opinion based on some sort of idiot hearsay or some kind of gut feeling you cannot validate. When I give an opinion, I do my best to make sure it is based on information.

So people get on me, and they say “If Harlan hates the Internet so much, what is he doing here?”. Well, whether or not I like the internet has about as much validity as a question as whether or not I like television. Nothing I do is going to stop television. Nothing I do or say is going to stop the Internet. I may not like the Internet, I may feel that it is my role in terms of the Internet to keep people alert to the dangers of the Internet, which I see, or the misuses of the Internet, which many people see, and which I talk about.

But whether or not I like the Internet does not make me a hypocrite for having a web page. I have a web page because you, Rick Wyatt, called me and said “Would you like a web page?”. And I said “Yeah, why not? What does it hurt for me to have a web page?”. Whether I like it or not has nothing to do with it. I don't even have a computer! So I don't even have to look at it! And if someone doesn't like my attitude, they really oughtta get off my web page immediately!

When people say “Ellison hates technology”, they are putting words in my mouth. I have never, ever, espoused a position of hating technology. Even “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, the original short story, is not anti-technology. What it is anti is anti-misuse by humans.

http://harlanellison.com/interview.htm


Ayn Rand


“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

Ayn Rand


“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others”

Ayn Rand


“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

Ayn Rand


“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”

Ayn Rand


Cesar Chavez:

The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.


Aung San Suu Kyi:

Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.


Frederick Douglass: Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.


Henry David Thoreau: If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.


Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC: Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.


Justice William O. Douglas: As nightfall does not come all 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 aware of change in the air however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.


Lillian Hellman: Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?


Paulo Freire: Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.


Simone Weil: Obvious and inexorable oppression that cannot be overcome does not give rise to revolt but to submission.


Stephen Jay Gould: I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.


Abraham Lincoln: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.


Friedrich Nietzsche: And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.


George Eliot: Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.


George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.


George Eliot: [I]t is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.


  • quotes.txt
  • Last modified: 2021/09/06 03:12
  • by becker