Some Favorite Quotes (merged: Post-a-quote)

[Dark Ragnarok]

Let's see what you got!

I'll start with one:

"Life is the 100% fatal STD"

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

Let's see what you got!

I'll start with one:

"Life is the 100% fatal STD"

That may be true for you, but I plan on living forever.

[3.14159265...]

Anything by Mark Twain, Neitzche, Ghandi, Freud, Socrates.. so many more..

I am a quote freak, I WILL LOVE this thread

[GhostWolfe]

"Life is the 100% fatal STD"

I always quoted "life is a terminal disease". But I never found out where the quote started.

[stuck]

"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche

[mrguy753]

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."
- Gandhi

[GhostWolfe]

I definitely think that your sig is one of my favorite quotes:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss

(thanks)

[Belial]

"Life is the 100% fatal STD"

I always quoted "life is a terminal disease". But I never found out where the quote started.

Life — and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison -- is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

Probably not the first place it was said, and so he(she) admits, but definitely one of them.

[xkcd]

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is."

I like that one because it sounds kind of clever, but then when you think about it it seems kind of trite/a truism. But if you look a little harder, it says something very important: no model/theory can predict its own divergence from reality. So be careful :)

Then there's one by Matt Groening:

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."

[Vandole]

"Walk softly and carry a big stick" - Theodore Roosevelt

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err." - Mohandas Gandhi

"Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion." - Mohandas Gandhi

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." - Mohandas Gandhi

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" - Thomas Jefferson

[Anmorata]

"Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go write it down, and either you over dramatize it or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it down quite the way you want to." --Sylvia Plath

That one's been a favorite of mine for a long time, as are the following, both by Neil Gaiman:

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.â€

[Velociraptor4life]

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer." - Also, Albert Camus

I also have a lot of inside joke quotes, but those are never really funny unless you're inside of the joke.

Or at least fairly adjacent to it.

[Belial]

A favorite quote, just because it contains both horrible lovecraft-y-ness, and also is by Gaiman.

"If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a lie. It means the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in the depths that I don't even want to think about. It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored."

-Rose Walker

[Dark Ragnarok]

"And another thing about cars... 'Certified Pre-owned'... Now you have documentation that you bought a piece of machinery that officially have the shit beaten out of it by it's previous owner. That's like getting married to someone who already had a divorce. Yes, she was married, but now she's divorced. Her papers clearly state that she was fucked by another man, prior to me fucking her."

~ Foamy

[Swordfish]

Check the signature for one.

In addition: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" -Wayne Gretzky

I can usualy spout about 100 of these things out, but I'm drawing blanks tonight.

[Mighty Jalapeno]

I like that one because it sounds kind of clever, but then when you think about it it seems kind of trite/a truism. But if you look a little harder, it says something very important: no model/theory can predict its own divergence from reality. So be careful

That's been my Slashdot sig for six years.

On the bottom of my website, I have a little dealie that comes up with a random quote everytime you navigate. They are:

"Everyone should be able to build, and as long as this freedom does not exist, the present-day planned architecture cannot be considered art."

"All fine architectural values are human values."

"I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple."

"Less is only more where more is no damn good."

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot."

"One travels the world in search of what he needs, then returns home to find it."

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own."

"I needed a job where my immense ego seems normal."

"Building well has three requirements: firmness, commodity, and delight."

"Never accept the accepted limits."

And these are just awesome ones I like

Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one. - Dawkins

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. - Dawkins

You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for 6 months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die than cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop really fast. – Dr House

Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit. Edward Abbey

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by
Douglas Adams

Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer,
sex raises some pretty good questions. Woody Allen

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Henri Bergson

There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it
and make it even worse! Calvin

Imagine a donut, fired from a cannon at the speed of light
while rotating. Time is like that, except without the
cannon and the donut. Dilbert

I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the kind of person
I'm preaching to. J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving
in words evidence of the fact. George Eliot

Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew,
and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
W. C. Fields

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute
thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks
why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is
"Probably because of something you did."
Jack Handey

Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.
Joon,from the film "Benny and Joon"

Life is like a sewer--you get out of it what you put into it.
Tom Lehrer

The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as in
playing a poor hand well. H. T. Leslie

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. Henry Louis Mencken

A man always has two reasons for doing anything -- a good reason
and the real reason. J. P. Morgan

Short folks are soon angry. Proverb (Scottish)

Beware of health books, you might die of a misprint. Mark Twain

[The LuigiManiac]

"Money is the root of all evil"

EDIT: And "A fool and his money are soon parted".

[GhostWolfe]

Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool; than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[DurAlvar]

Comedy ones are more fun, hence;

"If at first you don't succeed, use a bigger hammer."

"Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be Evil."

"If Vegetarians eat Vegetables, what do Humanitarians eat?"

"I went to watch Pavarotti once. He doesn't like it when you join in."

"College is the fountain of knowledge, and the students are there to drink."

"The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp"

[Mighty Jalapeno]

My friend's motto (as far as I know, he thought of it)

"Power corrupts, and absolute power is really cool."

[Gelsamel]

"Science is interesting, if you don't agree you can fuck off"

[GhostWolfe]

My friend's motto (as far as I know, he thought of it)

"Power corrupts, and absolute power is really cool."

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, but it really rocks too!

(I saw that at Despair where they take those awful inspirational posters and twist them into far funnier versions)


"If at first you don't suceed: try, try again. Then quit, there's no point in being a damn fool about it." WC Fields

[Amnesiasoft]

"Just let me throw a barrel at it!" — Dash, from Freakazoid!

...I'll get back to you when I remember the other one.

[Dark Ragnarok]

Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool; than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

I once saw on a fortune cookie -

"Tis better to ask questions and be a fool for 5 minutes, than not speak and remain a fool forever."

I find contradiction between the two! XP

[NightStar]

Serious:

"No wind favors him who has no destined port." -Montaigne

Not Serious:

"I am NOT making a banana bread pastrami cottage cheese sandwich! That would severely ruin my reputation." -Mitch Hedberg

[PS_Mouse]

"Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea"
- Despair Inc.

"Every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people each year..."
- Despair Inc.

Desiderata
- Max Ehrmann

[Vaniver]

"No wind favors him who has no destined port." -Montaigne

I have heard this as "If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable"- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (who lived about a millennium before Montaigne)

The few I have on my facebook:

"quod natura non dat Salmantica non praestat" - What nature does not provide, Salamanca does not add (education cannot substitute for a lack of brains)

"Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well" Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

"When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant- a major sports coliseum at the heart of their capital." - Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as [we] are free to ask what [we] must, free to say what [we] think, free to think what [we] will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - Richard Feynman

"There is no greater wealth than wisdom, no greater poverty than ignorance; no greater heritage than culture and no greater support than consultation." - Ali ibn Abi-Talib

"There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government." - George Will

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." - Milton Friedman

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Expury

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting "The Bhagavad Gita"

"The power to dominate rests on the differential possession of knowledge" -Bentham (possibly Foucault)

"Wit is educated insolence." - Aristotle

"If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics." - Roger Bacon

[grim4593]

It began with recognition that humans were not created equal, that they possessed different inherited abilities and experienced different events in their lives. This produced people of different accomplishments and different worth.
-Heretics of Dune-Frank Herbert

There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other.
-Dune Messiah-Frank Herbert

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
-Arthur C. Clarke

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'
-Mikhail Bakunin

To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

[tarkadal]

To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.

To steal from one source is called plagarism, to steal from many is called research.

I "researched" that from somewhere else, I claim no credit.

Also, *points to sig* I stole that from R.E.M.

[Dark Ragnarok]

"Love is when the god in me sees the god in you" - (i don't know who said it)

"Man is just a god in ruins" - (i don't know who said this either)

"You can try to avoid hurt, but when you clearly can't, you can choose to either go through with it with dignity or not" - Myself

[__Kit]

1 & 2 (i.e less than three, i.e <3, i.e 'heart) this thread, keep em coming.

Heres a few I stole for this thread, may it become a grand tapestry.

When arguing with a fool, make sure he is not doing the same thing. - Book!

Never judge a book by its movies.

There are three kinds of women, the beautiful, the intelligent and the majority.

There are three mathematicians, those who can count and those who cannot (kinda like me sig!)

kinda like some others here - Asking dumb questions is easier than correcting dumb mistakes/ It is better to measure 5 times and draw one, than to measure once and draw 5 times - both from memory.

Hara-kiri takes a lot of guts - the nerd in me appreciates this.

by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail

As the deaf nymphomaniac said - "Come again?"

thats my $00.4 (new zealand dollars sorry)

[toysbfun]

There is a right and a wrong in the universe, and the distinction between the two is not that difficult to make. - Elliot S! Maggin, Superman, Last Son of Krypton

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. - Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey

There is no security...against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness... Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing... Assume for the sake of argument that conscious beings have existed for some twenty million years: see what strides machines have made in the last thousand! May not the world last twenty million years longer? If so, what will they not in the end become? - Samuel Butler, Erewhon

[Something Random]

Wee, I like these threads.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
-Robert Wilensky

'Growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional.'

[evilbeanfiend]

Wee, I like these threads.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
-Robert Wilensky

to which the obvious reply is, o rly? http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a65

[Jesse]

I find myself wondering about humanity. Thair attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.

Many thousands of years ago I heard a song in a dream, a mortal song that celebrated her gift. I still remember it.

"Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a
garden after sickness.

Death is before me today:
Like the odour of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail
in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream;
Like the return of a man
from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
after years spent as a captive."

That forgotten poet understood her gifts. My sister has a function to perform, even as I do. The Endless have their responsibilities. I have responsibilities.

I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from her soul. I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings...

Also

You don't understand it, do you? I don't give a shit about you! I only care about what's in your fucking head! If you won't help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!

[anotherangel]

"The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. stone crumbles. wood rots. people, well, they die. but things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on." -- Chuck Palahniuk

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul." -- Henry Rollins

[Ren]

No, it's the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?
-Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man

I have discovered that all human misery comes from a single thing, which is not knowing enough to stay quietly in your room.--Pascal

If anybody loses hope, close your eyes, touch your chest and whisper to yourself, "Be wild, children, be wild."--Owen Pallett

[bbctol]

"45.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Makes 'em pause, and when they're about to speak up, hit them with "Can you believe half the people I tell that to think it's true?"

[EvanED]

"I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple."

Calvin!

Anyway, I've got a whole bunch that I can't think of at the moment.

My .plan currently ends with:

"128 bottles of beer on the wall,
128 bottles of beer,
take half down and pass them around,
64 bottles of beer on the wall."
(I've actually been involved in singing this...)

Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
--http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eugene/quotes/prog.html

Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
--bash.org (I think)

If my calculations are correct SLINKY + ESCALATOR = EVERLASTING FUN
--bash.org


There is also this one:
"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 W. Kernighan

I might post more tonight after I go home and look up my quotes file.

[ArchangelShrike]

A quote for today.