"Travel is lethal to prejudice." MARK TWAIN Jennings' Innate Perversity of Nature Rule: The tendancy of Nature to cause exactly the thing you are not prepared for, to happen. This is because Nature gets to use the set of all things NOT known to humans, which by definition is infinite. Paradise is just like where you are right now, only much better. LAURIE ANDERSON ("Language is a virus") Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. HASSAN I SABBAH Dont let your mouth write no check that your tail cant cash. BO DIDDLEY The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. NIELS BOHR Just because everything is different doesnt mean anything has changed. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ORACLE The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H P LOVECRAFT The most merciless thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H P LOVECRAFT Take what you can use and let the rest go by. KEN KESEY Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. SIGMUND FREUD When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one Ive never tried before. MAE WEST It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night. WILLIE SUTTON If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? RICHARD M NIXON When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality. AL CAPONE Anything anybody can say about America is true. EMMETT GROGAN If youve seen one city slum, youve seen them all. SPIRO AGNEW If youve seen one redwood, youve seen them all. RONALD REAGAN He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return. SOUTH AFRICAN SAYING The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak. WAVY GRAVY The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. BUCKMINSTER FULLER Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER America, how can a write a holy litany in your silly mood? ALLEN GINSBERG It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody. RICHARD M NIXON Justice is incidental to law and order. J EDGAR HOOVER Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. GROUCHO MARX I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. OSCAR WILDE We are what we pretend to be. KURT VONNEGUT, JR We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. OSCAR WILDE Real wealth can only increase. R BUCKMINSTER FULLER In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. JOHN LILLY Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space. GRAFFITI The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. ALBERT EINSTEIN Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. TALLULAH BANKHEAD A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms. GEORGE WALD We dont know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasnt a fish. JOHN CULKIN I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. OSCAR WILDE If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. STANLEY GARN The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls. FATHER ROBERT F CAPON Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. RICHARD M NIXON We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitiable. JOHN F KENNEDY "Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isnt, it aint. Thats logic." LEWIS CARROLL It takes a long time to understand nothing. EDWARD DAHLBERG To know the world one must construct it. CESARE PAVESE The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out. TENESSEE WILLIAMS All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya dont go lookin' for rutabagas. KINGFISH When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. CALVIN COOLIDGE Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #1 The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #3 Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #5 The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system are the key to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #6 Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #7 All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise - which is impossible. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #8 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some useful work done. GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #9 Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. ROBERT D SPRECHT (RAND CORP) Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. CONFUCIUS It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. MARK TWAIN The unnatural, that too is natural. GOETHE I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure. GRAFFITI I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didnt like it. SAMUEL GOLDWYN I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. GRAFFITI 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability - George Bernard Shaw - Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof Ashley Montague - Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence. Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel H. L. Mencken - The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion George Washington - In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty. - Thomas Jefferson - Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations - Thomas Jefferson - We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately - Benjamin Franklin - The Swartzberg Test: The validity of a science is its ability to predict. Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on... - Winston Churchill - That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest - Thoreau - Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgi - Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor. - Toynbee - We have met the enemy and he is us - Walt Kelly (in POGO) - There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them - Heisenberg - If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost. "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else. R. Buckminster Fuller I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work. Gallagher Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. Robert Heinlein None of the errors was found. Compiler message, Micro Data Base Systems ... if it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary. Samuel Clemens I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. Mark Twain The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge. Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. "We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted." -- H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks. Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a program? Ten. Nine to hold it down, and one to cut its head off. Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark. PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. WEILER'S LAW: Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself. FINAGLE'S LAW: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse. THE ULTIMATE PRINCIPLE: By definition, when you are investigating the unknown - you do not know what you will find. Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology 1) No action is without side-effects. 2) Nothing ever goes away. 3) There is no free lunch. Harvard Law Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. Asked what he thought of Western civilization, M. K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea". A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. "One Galileo in two thousand years is enough." -- Pope Pius XII Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom. A man gazing at the stars is at the mercy of every puddle on the road.