The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.
- Edward Abbey (Vox Clamans in Deserto)
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.
- Edward Abbey
If you don’t like the answer, you shouldn’t have asked the question.
- Charles C. Abbott
If you have to ask, you’re not entitled to know.
- Charles C. Abbott
We must avoid here two complementary errors: on the one hand that the world has a unique, intrinsic, pre-existing structure awaiting our grasp; and on the other hand that the world is in utter chaos. The first error is that of the student who marvelled at how the astronomers could find out the true names of distant constellations. The second error is that of the Lewis Carroll’s Walrus who grouped shoes with ships and sealing wax, and cabbages with kings...
- R. Abel, Man is the Measure, New York: Free Press, 1976
Food is rotting in warehouses, being burned and dumped into the sea. It is the money system destroying food to maintain prices.
- William Aberhart
My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.
- Ralph Abraham
When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
- General Creighton W. Abrams
Without freedom, no one really has a name.
- Milton Acorda
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
- Dean Acheson
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton (1834-1902) in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
- John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton (1834-1902)
No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied - it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.
- Ansel Adams
[On role-playing games] Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement of double- entry bookkeeping.
- Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope
...the genes almost _always_ accurately reproduce. If they don’t, you get one of the following results: One, monsters-- that is, grossly malformed babies resulting from genetic mistakes. Years ago most monsters died, but now many can be saved. This has made possible the National Football League.
- Cecil Adams
If you have something to do, and you put it off long enough, chances are someone else will do it for you.
- Clyde F. Adams
Sorry about that, Chief!
- Don Adams as Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart"
We didn’t have any room for the 7th floor in the building, so we put it in the building next door. So now it has two 7th floors, which is a very interesting thing to know if you ever go there--which you probably won’t, ’cause the building next door is false.
- Don Adams as Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart"
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money - sincerity and integrity.
- Donald Adams
Life is wasted on the living.
- Douglas Adams (Zaphod Beeblebrox IV)
Watch?? I’m gonna pray, man! Know any good religions?
- Douglas Adams (Zaphod Beeblebrox)
... all mechanical or electrical or quantum-mechanical or hydraulic or even wind, steam or piston-driven devices, are now required to have a certain legend emblazoned on them somewhere. It doesn’t matter how small the object is, the designers of the object have got to find a way of squeezing the legend in somewhere, because it is their attention which is being drawn to it rather than necessarily that of the user’s. The legend is this: ’The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.’
- Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless"
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
There is a theory that state: "If anyone finds out what the universe is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizzarly inexplicable." There is another theory that states: "This has already happened..."
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
With a rubber duck, one’s never alone.
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
- Douglas Adams, Marvin in "Life, the Universe, and Everything"
Don’t try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
- Douglas Adams, Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy"
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase ’As pretty as an Airport’ appear.
- Douglas Adams
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
- Douglas Adams
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
- Douglas Adams
There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel.
- Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960), 1932
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
- Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960)
I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best.
- Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960)
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
- Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960)
What you think means more than anything else in your life. More than what you earn, more than where you live, more than your social position, and more than what anyone else may think about you.
- George Adams
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), "The Education of Henry Adams", Ch. 13
A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), "The Education of Henry Adams", Ch. 20
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), "The Education of Henry Adams", Ch. 20
Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
- Joey Adams
Marriage is give and take. You’d better give it to her or she’ll take it anyway.
- Joey Adams
...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense.
- John Adams (Diary, 1786)
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
- John Adams
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
- Mike Adams
A thing can be true and still be desperate folly.
- Richard Adams, "Watership Down"
If the committee members insist on standardizing on bugs, there is nothing the rest of us can do about the situation -- except point out the stupidity of such actions.
- Jim Adcock
We gladly feast on those who would subdue us ... not just pretty words, Fester.
- Morticia Addams - from the Addams Family movie
Women: can’t live with ’em... Can’t shoot ’em.
- David Addison
’Tis not in mortals to command success
but we’ll do more, Sempronius - we’ll deserve it.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719), "Cato", 1713, act I, sc. ii
A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more, than the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated, were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
A statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Contentment produces in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher’s stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing, by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man’s mind, body, or fortune, it makes him easy under them.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Good breeding shows itself most where, to an ordinary eye, it appears least.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Great souls by instinct to each other turn. Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use; but ir is make use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything solemn and serious.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
In my Lucia’s absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden; I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Talk not of comfort, ’tis for lighter ills; I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
There are many shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, that gives a value to all the rest, which sets them to work in their proper times and places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own principle.
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless-- a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules and subvert them thereby-- that should be our goal.
- Howard Adelman
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
- George Ade
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
- George Ade
It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
- Alfred Adler
You can’t light a candle without somewhere casting a shadow.
- Margot Adler
Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.
- Mortimer Adler
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
- Stella Adler
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
- Aesop
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
- Aesop
Place not your trust in Princes nor great men, they are but dust themselves, place your trust in righteousness.
- Agadah
Facts are stupid until brought into connection with some general law.
- Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873)
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
- Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-1873)
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.
- James Agate
THis only is denied to God: the power to undo the past
- Agathon (c. 448-400 BC) "Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics" bk, VI ch. 2
If you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all.
- Spiro Agnew
Yippies, hippies, yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike- I would swap the whole damn zoo for the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.
- Spiro Agnew
I’m not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls.
- George Aiken, US Senator, on the Vietnam war in January 1966
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.
- Howard Aiken
Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.
- Leo Aikman
A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.
- Ryunosuke Akutagawa
I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.
- Emma Albani
Never give a sucker and even break.
- Edward Francis Albee (1857-1930)
When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
- Leon Battista Alberti
Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.
- Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
- Louisa May Alcott
It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It’s only necessary to be rich.
- Alan Alda
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle.
- Robery Alden
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
- Brian Aldiss
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don’t think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There’s a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever - unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.
- Thomas Aldrich
How can we hope to remain economically competitive in a world in which... 90% of Dutch high-school students take advanced math courses and 100% of teachers in Germany have double majors, while the best we can say about our "pocket of excellence" is that 75% of [American] students have learned to "critique tactfully?"
- Barbara J. Alexander
It’s hard to say who brags more, the reformed smoker or the guy whose car gets 30 miles to the gallon.
- James Alexander
I don’t believe man is woman’s natural enemy. Perhaps his lawyer is.
- Shana Alexander
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.
- Conte Vittorio Alfieri
Once you accept your own death all of a sudden you are free to live. You no longer care about your reputation, you no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.
- Saul Alinsky
My toughest fight was with my first wife.
- Muhammad Ali
Superman don’t need no seatbelt.; Champ, Superman don’t need no plane.
- Muhammed Ali and a stewardess
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
- Agnes Allen
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956) "Sarcasm is the sour cream of wit"
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
An income tax form is like a laundry list -- either way you lose your shirt.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
California is a great place to live if you’re an orange.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Committee: a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
If I could get my membership fee back, I’d resign from the human race.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
My uncle is a Southern planter. He’s an undertaker in Alabama.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Television is a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
What’s on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people.
- Frederick Lewis Allen
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
- Henry Allen
Religions change; beer and wine remain.
- Hervey Allen (1889-1949)
Cameras are so simple to operate now that taking pictures is much easier than getting friends to look at them.
- Hugh Allen
For 40 years I have analyzed stocks and other money markets. Now I have made a remarkable discovery. The Confederate dollar has risen in value 7.4 percent a year since 1965. It has outperformed the German mark, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc.
- Vincent W. Allen
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), "Annie Hall"
Yes, that was Richard Nixon. He used to be President. When he left the White House, the Secret Service would count the silverware.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), "Sleeper"
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), Without Feathers
What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream? Or what’s worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
- Woody Allen (1933- ), Without Feathers
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), Without Feathers
If my film makes one more person miserable I’ll feel I’ve done my job.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), interview by "Time", April 30, 1979
I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats.
- Woody Allen (1933- ), on the KKK
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" - probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?
- Woody Allen (1933- )
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Reality is still the only place to get a good steak
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children. I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
The only difference between sex and death is, with death you can do it alone and nobody’s going to make fun of you.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
There are two kinds of people. Those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
To YOU I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.
- Woody Allen (1933- )
In the economic sense, our socialism was more like state capitalism ... Marx had never dreamed of anything of the sort ... Soviet Russia had broken with everything in her history that was revolutionary, and had got onto the usual rails of great-power imperialism.
- Svetlana Alliluyeva
The best simpleminded test of expertise in a particular area is an ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in that area.
- Graham Allison
If you steal ideas from one source, that’s plagiarism, but if you steal ideas from more than one source, that’s research.
- Laurendo Almeida, Brazilian guitarist.
There are three kinds of death in this world. There’s heart death, there’s brain death, and there’s being off the network.
- Guy Almes
According to my best recollection, I don’t remember.
- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
- Noelie Altito
Tuez-les tous! Dieu reconna\^itra les seins! (Kill-them all! God will recognize his own!)
- Arnaud Amaury, Bishop of Citeaux to Simon de Montfort in Beziers, 1209
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.
- Eric Ambler
Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.
- Mark Amidon of Elbows
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
- Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821-1881)
I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that would be distributed equally throughout the world.
- Idi Amin
If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
- Kingsley Amis
I can’t take a well-tanned person seriously.
- Cleveland Amory
There are three terrible ages of childhood - 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30.
- Cleveland Amory
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats *and* dogs!
- Sonjay Anand
Even a fool knows you can’t touch the stars, but it doesn’t stop a wise man from trying.
- Harry Anderson, "Night Court"
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 most difficult light bulb to replace burns out first and most frequently.
- Joe Anderson
You don’t need to fly to have more fun with wings.
- Joe Anderson
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much better
- L. Anderson
What do you call frogs sauteed in egg and milk? Fried toads.
- Lani Anderson
When love is gone, there’s always justice. And when justice is gone, there’s always force. And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi, Mom!
- Laurie Anderson
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
- Poul Anderson
We all know UNIX can do anything, because its NP-complete.
- Ray Anderson
Reality isn’t what it used to be.
- Walter Truett Anderson
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
- Mario Andretti
I remember, a long time ago, flying in a C-119 from Amarillo AFB to Ellington AFB. THe crew chief made sure we all had parachutes on and properly fitted, and that we knew what to pull and when.
Then he told us that one ring on the big bell meant trouble; three rings meant _big_ trouble; and that if he locked the button down and let it ring, then we’d better get out before he did unless one of us wanted to be the aircraft commander until impact.
- Mike Andrews in alt.sysadmin.recovery, 2001-03-23
Fusion bombs have fission bombs installed there to ignite ’em,
And fission bombs have lesser bombs and so ad infinitum.
And fusion bombs themselves inflate the budgets that they grow on;
These budgets then grow greater still, and greater still, and so on.
- Mike Andrews
Hardware extracts your blood. Software extracts your sanity.
- Greg Andrews
Things have never been the same since my arch enemy, due to a slight clerical error, put a price on my shed.
- James Andrew (jim@magrathea.plus.com)
What are you doing?
Writing free verse.
You don’t even have to compile that, do you?
- Mark Andy and Elliott Evans
God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.
- Norman Angell
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know He is.
- Jean Anouilh
When your ship comes in, make sure you are willing to unload it.
- Robert Anthony
Drinking together in the evening we are human.
When dawn comes, animals
We rise up against each other.
- Antimedon (1st century BC)
Two things only a man cannot hide: that he is drunk and that he is in love.
- Antiphanes
Omissions, no less than commissions, are often times branches of injustice.
- Antoninus
The best sort of revenge is not to be like him who did the injury.
- Antoninus
Give, expecting nothing thereof
- St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
If the highest aim of a captain were simply to preserve his ship, he’d just keep it in port forever.
- St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
It doesn’t matter what your IQ is if you only use one point at a time
- arachne to a luser in uk_goffs
Some people say the pen is mightier than the sword. I say fuck the pen, because you can die by the sword.
- Tom Araya
You’re aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he’s teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It’s him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it’s like the man says, "It’s not what you know...
- Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of Albert Einstein
One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
- Mark Ardis
News always travels by the fastest available route.
- Major Whitey Ardmore
Take any religious mystery, any theological proposition: expressed in ordinary terms it will read like sheer nonsense to the outsider, from the ritualistic, symbolic eating of human flesh and blood practiced by all the Christian sects to the outright cannibalism practiced by some savages.
- Major Whitey Ardmore
Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions.
- Robert Ardrey
Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
- Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
The demonstrably true statements of the sciences which, especially in recent times, have the uncomfortable inclination never to stay put, although, at any given moment they are, and must be, valid for all.
- Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
All men by nature desire knowledge.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC), "Metaphysics", bk. I, ch. 1
Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC), from Diogenes Laertius "Lives of Eminent Philosophers", bk. V, sec. 19
Education is the best provision for old age.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of Eminent Philosophers", bk. V, sec. 21
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
He who hath many friends hath none.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
No one loves the man whom he fears.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
The gods too are fond of a joke
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Wit is educated insolence.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
People become progressive less competent for jobs they were once well equipped to handle.
- Paul Armer
In larger things we are convivial; What causes trouble is the trivial.
- Richard Armour
I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street.
- Neil Armstrong
That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.
- Neil Armstrong
Sleep is actually a good substitute for coffee
- Bill Arms, Carnegie Mellon Vice-President, May 14, 1993
With the proper consideration in choice of allies, victory may be guaranteed in any conflict.
- Benedict Arnold
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Sohrab and Rustum", l. 656
For rigorous teachers siezed my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire,
Showed me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse", st 12
Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed sleep exactly here. However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast asleep he was.
- Dave Aronson
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals" 1957
Reality is always more conservative than ideology.
- Raymond Aron
You can lead a whore to Vasser, but you can’t make her think.
- Frederick B. Artz
There was an actual St. Chad. He was an early English abbot, whose claim to fame was that he was elected bishop of York but his election was nullified by the archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, we have the perfect patron of disputed elections.
- Arval d’Espas Nord in rec.org.sca
How do you tell the difference between an electrical fire and a chemical fire? You use a fire distinguisher, of course.
- Dave Ascher
Whereas in the past the only resource for dealing with biological systems was to try to minimize the interactions between the parts, thereby often losing the real focus of interest, today nothing but time and money prevent us from treating real biological systems in all their complexity and richness.
- W. Ross Ashby
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
- Alan Ashley-Pitt
Arithmetical proofs of theorems that do not have arithmetical bases prove nothing.
- G. O. Ashley
Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from non-practitioners.
- G. O. Ashley
Numbers are symbols for things; the number and the thing are not the same.
- G. O. Ashley
Numbers are tools, not rules.
- G. O. Ashley
Skill in manipulating numbers is a talent, not evidence of divine guidance.
- G. O. Ashley
The product of an arithmetical computation is the answer to an equation; it is not the solution to a problem.
- G. O. Ashley
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
Against stupidity, even the gods themselves contend in vain.
- Isaac Asimov
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
- Isaac Asimov
I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
- Isaac Asimov
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
- Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
- Isaac Asimov
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world.
- Isaac Asimov
One man’s religion is another mans’ belly laugh.
- Isaac Asimov
Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.
- Isaac Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That’s funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man’s habits change quickly enough?
- Isaac Asimov
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fevor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
- Isaac Asimov
[John] Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
- Isaac Asimov
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
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it.
- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.
- Margot Asquith
When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty sure he’s going to have a go at it anyway.
- Clyde B. Aster
A lady in waiting must learn to wait.
- John Astin as Gomez, The Addams Family
The only thing I like about rich people is their money.
- Lady Astor
I married beneath me - all women do.
- Nancy Astor
I, on the other hand, have a degree from the University of Life, a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks, and three gold stars from the Kindergarten of Getting the Shit Kicked Out of Me.
- Rowan Atkinson as Captain Edmund Blackadder in "Blackadder Goes Forth"
The Pimpernel is the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot won the A.D.31 ’Best Disciple’ competition
- Rowan Atkinson in "Blackadder"
Hospitality to the better sort, and charity to the poor; two virtues that are never exercised so well as when they accompany each other.
- Atterbury
It is better to have nothing to do than to be doing nothing.
- Attilus
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly want to keep.
- Alan Atwood
Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.
- Margaret Atwood
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
When one has great gifts, what answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise them?
- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
The optimum committee has no members.
- Norman Augustine
Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
Be always displeased with what thou art, if your desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou have enough thou perisheth. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
Cursed is every-one who places his hope in man.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
He who conceals a useful truth is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.
- St. Augustine (354-430)
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
- Marcus Aurelius
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817)
What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the next job after a series of threes is not the fourth job- it’s the start of a brand new series of threes.
- Avery’s Rule of Threes
No ball game is ever much good unless the people involved hate each other.
- Avery
Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.
- Avery
It does not matter if you fall down as long as you pick up something from the floor while you get up.
- Oswald Theodore Avery (1877-1955)
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
- Bernard Avishai
Sometimes I question the wisdom of my actions, but more often I seem to be acknowledging the stupidity of them.
- Captain Axly
Despise not any man, and do not spurn any thing. For there is no man that hath not his hour, no is there any thing that hath not its place.
- Rabbi Ben Azai
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