[26] in Humor
HUMOR: Quotes of Note
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue Jan 25 16:01:36 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 15:57:37 EST
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 23:18:25 -0800
From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
krisna@cs.wisc.edu (Krishna Kunchithapadam)
--------------------------
From: johnch@test22.sun.com (Skeezix)
Henry Miller once wrote, and I *think* he was quoting someone, saying,
"You can fight against evil, but you're helpless against stupidity."
--------------------------
From: ebo@algodones.unm.edu ((E.A. Bouffier - John David))
"Every free citizen is an ENEMY of the STATE."
-- Kurt J. Robertson
--------------------------
From: yww@ornl.gov (WOLFE W R)
Subj: Red Heat
Arnie: "In my country, we lined all the drug dealers and drug addicts
and shot them in the back of the head."
Fellow cop: "Nah, that wouldn't work here. Too many politicians."
Arnie: "Shoot them first."
--------------------------
From: Joe.Butt
A friend is someone who sees you the way you want to be.
--------------------------
From: dji@atson.asahi-np.co.jp (David J. Iannucci)
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is
possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should
be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly
in 5 years.
- John Von Neumann (ca. 1949)
--------------------------
From: Karen M. Carlini <KC0768A@auvm.american.edu>
"True happiness/Consists not in the multitude of friends
But in the worth and choice"
--Ben Jonson "Cynthia's Revels" act III, sc.ii
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
--------------------------
From: R_WINES@saphir (Rodney Wines)
In <253r4u$dvj@bronze.lcs.mit.edu> abbe@bronze.lcs.mit.edu writes:
> [interesting how many of us on the net find insults to intelligence the best]
Yes. My all time favorite, which I heard before there _was_ a net, is,
"You'd get hours of uninterrupted reading enjoyment from a STOP sign."
--------------------------
From: fnord@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca (Andrew KUCHLING)
A day without a pun is a day without sunshine; there is
gloom for improvement.
- John S. Crosbie
Every time I try to define a perfectly stable person, I am
appalled by the dullness of that person.
- J.D. Griffin
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Robert P. Dolan:Wbst311
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people
some of the time, which is just long enough to be president of the
United States."
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
tonyp@cnvxla.convex.com (honey bunny)
From: clay@panix.com (Clay Irving)
If you want to return an insult with another insult, here's a list of
insults I grabbed from somewhere...
INSULTS
I'm looking forward to the pleasure of your company since I haven't had
it yet.
When you get run over by a car it shouldn't be listed under accidents.
I hear that when you were a child your mother wanted to hire someone to
take care of you but the Mafia wanted too much.
I hear that when your mother first saw you she decided to leave you on
the front steps of a police station while she turned herself in.
I admire your because I've never had the courage it takes to be a liar,
a thief and a cheat.
You're acquitting yourself in such a way that no jury ever would.
--------------------------
From: capek@watson.ibm.com (Peter Capek)
Subj: Einstein on problem solving
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used
when we created them."
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
danieln@sybase.com (Daniel Nitschke)
From: rand@skydiver.Eng.Sun.COM (Avant-Garde-A-Clue)
If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
Steve Wright
Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET?
Michael Meissner
--------------------------
From: glazier@isr.harvard.edu (Andrew Baker Glazier)
"Paranoia is another word for heightened awareness"
"Last night I had a terrible nightmare that I was
accepted by society"
"Never surrender, not even in the face of armageddon"
Rorschach
"I'd rather have Lockheed deliver the mail than ride in
a plane built by the Post Office"
"I deny that I said that actors are like cattle. I said
that they should be treated like cattle."
Alfred Hitchcock
"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough."
M. C. Escher
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
chibnik@reach.com (Ron Chibnik)
The power of accurate observation is commonly called
cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining."
-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
"Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things
they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
-- Andy Rooney
In fact, one thing that I have noticed . . . is that all
of these conspiracy theories depend on the perpetrators being
endlessly clever. I think you'll find the facts also work if
you assume everyone is endlessly stupid.
- Brian E. Moore
When _I_ come upon anything-- in Logic or in any other hard
subject-- that entirely puzzles me, I find it a capital plan
to talk it over, _aloud_, even when I am all alone. One can
explain things so _clearly_ to one's self! And then, you know,
one is so _patient_ with one's self: one _never_ gets irritated at
one's own stupidity!
- Lewis Carroll
University President: "Why is it that you physicists
always require so much expensive equipment? Now the
Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for
paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of
Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers."
- Told by Isaac Asimov
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Brian.Gordon@eng.sun.com (Brian Gordon)
From: webbp@xavier.xu.edu ( )
We seem to have achieved the remarkable situation where nearly half the
population is telling the other half what it should be doing and thinking,
and checking up that it is doing it.
Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh, <A Question of Balance>
[1982]: 5. Community Health, p.99
--------------------------
From: fnord@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca (Andrew KUCHLING)
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in
the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet
everything is completely different.
- Aldous Huxley
- The Devils of Loudun
Some people have so much respect for their superiors they
have none left for themselves.
- Peter McArthur
"Social gains," "social aims," "social objectives" have
become the daily bromides of our language. The necessity of a
social justification for all activities and all existence is
now taken for granted. There is no proposal outrageous enough
but what its author can get a respectful hearing and
approbation if he claims that in some undefined way it is for
"the common good."
- Ayn Rand
- Anthem
We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We
owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so.
- R.W. Dickson
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Keijo V{h{hyypp{ <keijovh@mdata.fi>
From: nahigian@athena.mit.edu (Gabriel H Nahigian)
"How do you feel about women's rights?"
"I like either side of them."
--------------------------
From: haavardf@elektron.uio.no (Haavard Fosseng)
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
- Groucho Marx
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had
been one.
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Bill Mackiewicz <mutara@ccs.neu.edu>
>From v140pxgt@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case):
"Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors-no wonder he is crazy."
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Thomas Nhan <tom@cassandra.chem.washington.edu>
From: fnord@cs.mcgill.ca (Andrew KUCHLING)
A print addict is a man who reads in elevators. People
occasionally look at me curiously when they see me standing
there, reading a paragraph or two as the elevator goes up. To
me, it's curious that there are people who do not read in
elevators. What can they be thinking about?
- Robert Fulford
You know what misery I went through there, listening to
lawyers day and night. If you'd had experience of them
yourself, as brave as you think you are, you'd have preferred
to clean out the Augean stables...
- Seneca
- The Apocolocyntosis
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and
detective stories.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Methusalem might be half an hour in telling what o'clock
it was: but as for us postdiluvians, we ought to do everything
in haste; and in our speeches, as well as actions, remember
that our time is short.
- Sir Richard Steele
Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician.
We need more statesmen.
- Bob Edwards
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a
degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional
assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow,
but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics
classrooms.
- Stephen Jay Gould
All this progress is marvelous . . . now if only it wouldstop!
- Allan Lamport
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Christopher Neufeld <neufeld@physics.utoronto.ca>
a .sig:
faber@cs.wisc.edu
"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." -- Maugham
--------------------------
From: eberts@donald.uoregon.edu (sonny hays-eberts)
the direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problems of
limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small
children and great nations. -- david friedman
--------------------------
From: fnord@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca (Andrew KUCHLING)
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those
using no data at all.
- Charles Babbage
The lecturer should give the audience full reason to
believe that all his powers have been exerted for their
pleasure and instruction.
- Michael Faraday
The real danger from advertising is that it helps to
shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material
possessions: the confidence in the existence of meaningful
purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of
man.
- Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy
Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or
other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively.
Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science
entirely; for science is but one.
- Seneca
Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is
taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking
so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he
understands the nature of physical problems that he is already
too old to solve them.
- Eugene Wigner
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Nina J. Thayer:ES M7
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going
but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
- Laurence J. Peter
You have perhaps heard the story of the four students--
British, French, American, Canadian-- who were asked to write
an essay on elephants. The British student entitled his essay
"Elephants and the Empire." The French student called his
"Love and the Elephant." The title of the American student's
essay was "Bigger and Better Elephants," and the Canadian
student called his "Elephants: A Federal or Provincial
Responsibility?"
- Robert H. Winters
Someone once said that the two most important things in
developing taste were sensitivity and intelligence. I don't
think this is so; I'd rather call them curiosity and courage.
Curiosity to look for the new and the hidden; courage to
develop your own tastes regardless of what others might say or
think.
- R. Murray Schafer
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the
shoreline of wonder.
- Ralph W. Sockman
Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell
me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died
nobly.
- Arnold Edinborough
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One
way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no
deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
- C.A.R. Hoare
I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your
entire body!
"There's no BODY-CHECKING in golf!!!"-Charlie Brown, to Lucy.
The UNIX system has the command, nice, which allows a user to voluntarily
reduce the priority of his process, in order to be nice to the other users.
Nobody ever uses it.
Joules.
ambition is a dream with a v8 engine.
i don't know if the death penalty ever stopped anyone from killin', but
it stops 'em from killin' again.
the ideal girl? female, sir.
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Kevin Martin <sigma@rahul.net>
I remember seeing a road side that wasn't funny in itself but where
it had been placed made it funny.
Aged People Cross Here --- This was placed right opposite a cemetery.
----------------------------------------------------
The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
From: neil@robots.ox.ac.uk
From: hallma@cda.mrs.umn.edu (Michael A. Hall)
"It's kinda funny. When I see my name anywhere, it's (often) the
'60's this or the '60's that. I can't figure out sometimes if people
think I'm dead or alive"
-Bob Dylan, 1985 interview
--------------------------
From: nm0w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Nanci Ann Miller)
The best mirror is a friend's eye.
A friend is a present you give to yourself.
The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.
--------------------------
From: grendel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alyosha Bourgea)
Here's a list of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) quotes.
Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and
your dog would go in.
It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother
me, it is the parts that I do understand.
Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the opposition employs a million.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you
please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal
life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more
foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)
It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them
and not to deserve them.
A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting
on its shoes.
Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. You boys and girls will see more
in the next fifty years than Methuselah saw in his whole lifetime.
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is differences of
opinion that make horse races.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
It is better to have old, second hand diamonds than none at all
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The following was sifted out of alt.quotations by:
Philip A. Fleischmann:ES AE
From: dok@fwi.uva.nl (Sir Hans)
Do not needlessly endanger your lives until ordered to do so.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
- George Benard Shaw
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.
- James Agee
--------------------------
From: rand@skydiver.Eng.Sun.COM (Avant-Garde-A-Clue)
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
From: v140pxgt@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case)
In article <1993Aug24.012930.2721@midway.uchicago.edu>, rivk@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
>[To a certain lady gesturing her ahead, who commented as Parker passed, "Age before beauty"]
>
> "Pearls before swine."
This was Clare Boothe Luce, who thoroughly deserved it and was a frequent target of Parker's wit. Which brings up another classic Parker line, also, of course, about Ms. Luce:
Upon hearing that Luce said she "was always kind to her inferiors",
Dorothy asked "Where does she find them?"
