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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z Unknown


If there isn’t a law, there will be.
- Harold Faber

The number of errors in any piece of writing rises in proportion to the writer’s reliance on secondary sources.
- Harold Faber

Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your experience helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind.
- Henri Fabre

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
- George Fabricius

Passions are fashions.
- Clifton Fadiman

If you want a language that tries to lock up all the sharp objects and fire-making implements, use Pascal or Ada: the Nerf languages, harmless fun for children of all ages, and they won’t mar the furniture.
- Scott Fahlman

All Galaxy Class Starships are equipped with their own dramatic lighting system
- Dan Fahs

In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it’s often useful to have a nice, solid piece of wood in your hands.
- Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is not necessary to make a decision.
- Lord Falkland

Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination of Charled DeGaulle and Disraeli, but I didn’t....out of respect for DeGaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that is how he describes himself. If I were a cowboy I would be offended.
- Oriana Fallaci

The most annoying trait of Right-Wing Outlaws in general is a lazy incuriosity about the real world. They know their lines, they’re sure who the good guys and the bad guys are. Therefore they view the passing world as a kind of animated "Bartlett’s Quotations" - that is, as handy source material with which to illustrate, rather than challenge, preconceived views.
- James Fallows

We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today... our battle is with Satan himself.
- Jerry Falwell

Rules for Academic Deans: 1) HIDE!!!! 2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
- Father Damian C. Fandal

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
- Michael Faraday

Give him an inch and he’ll screw you.
- Dave Farber

Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.
- Dave Farber

We’re all going down the same road in different directions.
- Dave Farber

Happiness at age ten was finding an empty six pack of returnable Coke bottles. The poor kids these days will never know that they missed, which is why we have a generation gap.
- Richard N. Farmer

He who sees only half the problem will be buried in the other half.
- Richard N. Farmer

He who sees what comes out, and why, gains wisdom.
- Richard N. Farmer

One man’s junk is another’s income - and sometimes his priceless antique.
- Richard N. Farmer

Seers and soothsayers read crystal balls to fine the future. Less lucky men read junk- with more success.
- Richard N. Farmer

Ten thousand years from now, the only story this civilization will tell will be in its junk piles- so observe what is important!
- Richard N. Farmer

What goes in, comes out.
- Richard N. Farmer

Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!
- Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870

What does "FTP" stand for? F*(# This Place!
- Kaveh Farshchi

Intellectual brilliance is no guarentee against being dead wrong.
- David Fasold

Between grief and nothing I will take grief.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept... The plastic asshole of the world.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

I believe that man will not endure; he will prevail.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Once a bitch, always a bitch.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Just because information has been published doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be classified.
- NSA director Lincoln D. Faurer

Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
- William Feather

Success makes us intolerant of failure, and failure makes us intolerant of success.
- William Feather

Artists can color the sky red because they know it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we’re stupid.
- Jules Feiffer

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
- Jules Feiffer

Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.
- Jules Feiffer

I grew up to have my father’s looks - my fathers speech patterns - my father’s posture - my father’s walk - my father’s opinions and my mother’s contempt for my father.
- Jules Feiffer

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
- Jules Feiffer

The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen, and all of a sudden they’ve reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you’re just horny. It doesn’t mean that you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.
- Jules Feiffer

Somehow the wondrous promise of the earth is that there are things beautiful in it, things wondrous and alluring, and by virtue of your trade you want to understand them.
- Mitchell Feigenbaum

Pascal is not a high-level language.
- Steven Feiner

You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.
- Steven Feiner

He that despairs, degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate, that He is insufficient, or not just to his word; and in vain hath read the Scriptures, the world and man.
- Feltham

It is best to hope only for things possible and probable; he that hopes too much shall deceive himself at last; especially if his industry does not go along with his hopes; for hope without action is a barren undoer.
- Feltham

Laughter should dimple the cheek, not furrow the brow. A jest should be such, that all shall be able to join in the laugh which it occasions; but if it bear hard upon one of the company, like the crack of a string, it makes a stop in the music.
- Feltham

There are in business three things necessary- knowledge, temper and time.
- Feltham

To go to law, is for two persons to kindle a fire at their own cost, to warm others, and singe themselves to cinders; and because they cannot agree, to what is truth and equity, they will both agree to unplume themselves, that others may be decorated with their feathers.
- Feltham

Works without faith are like a fish without water, it wants the element it should live in. A building without a basis cannot stand; faith is the foundation, and every good action is as a stone laid.
- Feltham

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
- Francois Fenelon

Never count a human dead until you’ve seen the body. And even then you can make a mistake.
- Lady Fenring

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
- Millicent Fenwick

A crisis is when you can’t say, "Let’s just forget the whole thing."
- Ferguson

If the King’s English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!
- Ma Ferguson, Governor of Texas (c. 1920)

Emilio, I am getting rusty and old, I cannot follow the highbrow theory developed by Oppenheimer’s pupils any more. I went to their seminar and was depressed by my inability to understand them. Only the last sentence cheered me up. It was: ’And this is Fermi’s theory of beta decay.’
- Enrico Fermi, to Emilio Segre

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.
- Enrico Fermi

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
- Ransom K. Ferm

It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.
- Richard J. Ferris, president, United Airlines

I’m going to make emacs be my X11 window manager or die trying.
- Jon Ferro, 7/18/93

What if there had been room at the inn?
- Linda Festa on the origins of Christianity

Important things that are supposed to happen do not happen, especially when people are looking.
- Charles Fetridge

Wherever a set of alternative possible routes toward achieving a given end presents itself, a student movement will tend to choose the one which involves a higher measure of violence or humiliation directed against the older generation.
- Lewis S. Feuer

Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
- Paul Feyerabend

A philosopher once said ’It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results’. Well, they do not. You set up the circumstances, with the same conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole you will see the electron.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

From a long view of the history of mankind -- seen from, say, ten thousand years from now -- there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provinciald insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

It’s because somebody knows something about it that we can’t talk about physics. It’s the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that’s not why we’re doing it.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

The purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place to spend one’s leisure.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity-- and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things...
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

There was a sociologist who had written a paper for all of us to read... I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head nor tail of it... Finally, I said to myself, ’I’m gonna stop and read one sentence slowly’... So I stopped -- at random -- and read the next sentence very carefully... ’The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.’ I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? ’People read.’
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

[On superstring theory:] I don’t like that they’re not calculating anything. I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation... It is precise mathematically, but the mathematics is far too difficult for the individuals that are doing it, and they don’t draw their conclusions with any rigour. So they just guess.
- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

When someone demands blind obedience, you’d be a fool not to peek.
- Jim Fiebig

An economist is a man who would marry Farrah Fawcett for her money.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Ask five economists and you’ll get five different explanations (six if one went to Harvard).
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Forecasting is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Give them a number or give them a date, but never both.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a camel’s behind.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

If you gave to forecast, forecast often.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Lord, please let me find a one-armed economist so we won’t always hear "On the other hand..."
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Most economists think of God as working great multiple regressions in the sky.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Never underestimate the power of a platitude.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

Once economists were asked, "if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?" Today they’re asked, "Now that you’ve proved you ain’t so smart, how come you got rich?"
- Edgar R. Fiedler

The herd instinct among forecasters make sheep look like independent thinker.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

The moment you forecast, you know you’re going to be wrong, you just don’t know when and in which direction.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

There must be underinvestment in bulls- just look at the rate of return.
- Edgar R. Fiedler

If you’re ever right, never let ’em forget it.
- Edgar R. Riedler

He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754), "Jonathan Wild"

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosom.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

George was a great dunce, but no matter for that: all men do not thrive in the world according to their learning.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Neither great poverty, nor great riches, will hear reason.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Superstition renders a man a fool, and scepticism makes him mad.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend, and then an enemy.
- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

This person called up and said, "You’ve got to come and take this seminar. It will completely change your life in just one weekend." And I said, "Well, I don’t want to completely change my life this weekend. I’ve got a lot of things to do on Monday."
- Rick Fields

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 (1880-1946), My Little Chickadee

’Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Any man who hates dogs and loves whiskey can’t be all bad.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

California is the only state in the union where you can fall asleep under a rose bush in full bloom and freeze to death.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Children should neither be seen nor heard from - ever again.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

I like children. If they’re properly cooked.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

I never met a kid I liked.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

I’m free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

If at first you don’t succeed, try again - if you still fail, give up - no sense being a damn fool about it.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Madam, there’s no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

My illness is dut to my doctor’s insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation
- W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

Opinion, that great fool, makes fools of all.
- Field

The persons hardest to convince they’re at the retirement age are children at bedtime.
- Shannon Fife

Calling is discouraged. Phones are evil. If my office wasn’t in the basement I’d throw my phone down the elevator shaft.
- Esther Filderman

I don’t like VMS. I can’t think in dollar signs.
- Esther Filderman

It’s not bogus, it’s an IBM standard.
- Esther Filderman

First impressions are of major importance in business matters.
- J. Pierpont Finch

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
- Andy Finkel, Commodore-Amiga Inc.

God was able to create the world in only seven days because he had no installed base to consider.
- Andy Finkel, Commodore-Amiga Inc.

The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose.
- James Finke, Pres., Commodore

I have a friend who told me that the greatest computer system ever built by mankind was by the Druids at Stonehenge. Well, that’s an old story. But what I liked was that he felt that the Druids didn’t die out, they just went bankrupt trying to debug the software.
- James Finkle, "Omni", August 1983

Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
- J. Finnegan, USC.

Money is wrong. It’s the means whereby man enslaves his brother.
- Finny

Wagner drives the nail into your head with swinging hammer blows.
- P. A. Fiorentino (1806-1864)

The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
- Ronald Firbank

Taunting someone for using Andrew is like laughing at a slave because he has lash marks on his back: in bad taste.
- Robert.Firth@sei.cmu.edu

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.
- John Fischer

Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
- Joseph Fischer

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, five days before the Crash of 1929.

Our view. . . is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied; or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and which ought to be deliberately ignored.
- Sir Ronald A. Fisher

Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved with the broth.
- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Get next to a clue and hope the wind blows, dude.
- Fitzbo

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Writers aren’t exactly people...they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Engineer (n): A machine for converting beer into blueprints.
- Paul Flaherty

There’s a saying among prospectors, "Go out looking for one thing, and that’s all you’ll ever find."
- Robert Flaherty

Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either totally obscure or completely mysterious.
- Dr. Fyodor Flap

Four people attack you with screwdrivers, you have a gun, they’re supposed to die. That’s not racism. That’s Darwin.
- Chip Flatow

...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fulness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) _Madame Bovary_, ch. 12

A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no! Let my flesh perish with me, and let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second.
- Jim Fiebig

If Noah had consulted with modern-day weather forecasters, there would have been a ten-percent chance of him building the ark.
- Jim Fiebig

Never bow to authority, but always tip your hat.
- Jim Fiebig

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
- John Fletcher

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.
- Fletham

There never has been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code.
- Lawrence Flon

I’m not religious at all, but I don’t believe in death. Death is a very beautiful thing. I believe _that_. . . . I won’t ever see you, darling, but it’s been very nice talking to you. Life is very beautiful, you know.
- Sheila Florance

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

My left is blocked, my right is stopped, I can’t retreat - only one thing left to do: Attack!
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.
- De Foe

The world is full of cactus, but we don’t have to sit on it.
- Will Foley

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.
- Jean de la Fontaine

Mathematicians are like lovers....Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.
- Fontenelle

Of all the passions that possess mankind, 
The love of novelty rules most the mind; 
In search of this, from realm to realm we roam; 
Our fleets come fraught with ev’ry folly home.
- Samuel Foote

One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.
- B. C. Forbes

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

To the wage earner, "free enterprise" is the way his boss treats him and those around him.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

When in doubt, duck.
- Malcolm S. Forbes

If you were a gay illegal-alien looking for an abortion, it was a humdinger of a week.
- Kirk Fordice, 1/29/93

The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: the person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person’s liberty. Are you free?
- Andrew Ford

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.
- Harrison Ford as Han Solo in "Star Wars"

Nothing shocks me. I’m a scientist.
- Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones

Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it; if you are sick, you shouldn’t take it.
- Henry Ford

History is bunk.
- Henry Ford

Reading musses up my mind.
- Henry Ford

The question, "Who ought to be boss?" is like asking, "Who ought to be tenor in the quartet?" Obviously the man who can sing tenor.
- Henry Ford

’Blueberry,’ Kirk thought, instead of ducking. WHAM! Blueberry it was.
- John M. Ford, "How Much for Just the Planet"

1. You can’t win. 2. You can’t break even. 3. You can’t get out of the game. 4. These are also the laws of thermodynamics, and they do not care how many blankets are pulled over your head.
- John M. Ford, _The Quagmatist’s Guide to Artistic Effort_

We’re not lost. We’re locationally challenged.
- John M. Ford

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been".
- President Gerald Ford

We have plenty of information technology - what is perhaps needed now is more intelligence technology, to help us make sense of the growing volume of information stored in the form of statistical data, documents, messages, and so on. For example, not many people know that the infamous hole in the ozone layer remained undetected for seven years as a result of infoglut. The hole had in fact been identified by a Us weather satellite in 1979, but nobody realised this at the time because the information was buried - along with 3 million other unread tapes - in the archives of the National Records Centre in Washington Dc. It was only when British scientists were analysing the data much later in 1986 that the hole in the ozone was first "discovered".
- Tom Forester

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
- E. M. Forster, "Two Cheers for Democracy"

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do belive in Art for Art’s sake.
- E. M. Forster

Setting loose on the battlefield weapons that are able to learn may be one of the biggest mistakes mankind has ever made. It could also be one of the last.
- Richard Forsyth - Machine Learning for Expert Systems

The more efficient computers become at inducing new knowledge, the more widely that knowledge will be applied, even in matters of life and death. It is essential that such knowledge be open to inspection. This means that designers of learning systems have a public duty to use comprehensible description languages-- even if that means sacrificing performance. Otherwise we run the risk of generating truly unknowable knowledge.
- Richard Forsyth, "Machine Learning for Expert Systems"

The story of man is the history, first, of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to permit communal life; and second, of the emancipation of the individual within that system of necessary restraints.
- Justice Abe Fortas

He who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other. He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.
- Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point"

If you cover a congressional committee on a regular basis, they will report the bill on your day off.
- Herb Foster

The guard dies, but never surrenders.
- Fougemont

It’s one of those irregular verbs. I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist.
- Derek Fowlds as Bernard Woolley, "Yes, Prime Minister"

That’s another of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential briefings, you leak, he’s being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.
- Derek Fowlds as Bernard Woolley, "Yes, Prime Minister"

In a bureaucracy accomplishment is inversely proportional to volume of paper used.
- Foster L. Fowler

An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he’d have someone to look up to.
- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
- Redd Foxx

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

It’s not by amusing oneself that one learns.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

Nothing spoils a confession like repentance.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way to take advantage of them
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

The impotence of God is infinite.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
- Anatole France (1844-1924)

Our actions are our own; thier consequences belong to Heaven.
- St. Francis

Once things have happened, no matter how accidentally, they will be regarded as manifestations of an unchangeable higher reason.
- Prof. Charles Frankel

Whatever happens in government could have happened differently and it usually would have been better if it had.
- Prof. Charles Frankel

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality
- Victor Frankel

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.
- Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965)

To some lawyers all facts are created equal.
- Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965)

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), 1759

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, is the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

At the working-man’s house hunger looks in, but dares not enter! nor will the bailiff or the constable enter; for industry pays debts, but despair increaseth them.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Be sober and temperate, and you will be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and endless in duration.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

He that lives upon Hope dies farting.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid; then shall thou reach the point of happiness, and independence shall be thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then thy soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse, because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Never confuse motion with action.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The early morning has gold in its mouth.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagra is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finast spectacles in nature.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or at nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a Billiard table, or hears your voice at a Tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

To be thrown on one’s own resources is to be cast in the very lap of fortune; for our faculties undergo a development, and display an energy, of which they were previously unsusceptible.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

We are more heavily taxed by our idleness, pride and folly than we are taxed by government.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

We think we are on the right road to improvement because we are making experiments.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

What maintains one vice, would bring up two children. Remember, many a little makes a mickle; and farther, beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

When I see a merchant over-polite to his customer, begging them to take a little brandy, and throwing his goods on the counter, thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Who is wise? He who learns from everyone. 
Who is powerful? He who governs his passions. 
Who is rich? He who is content. 
Who is that? Nobody.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

To the generous mind, the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when ’tis not in our power to repay it.
- Dr. Thomas Franklin

Management is incapable of recognizing a true crisis.
- Gene Franklin

Management will select actions or events and convert them to crises. It will then over-react.
- Gene Franklin

The squeaky hinge gets the oil.
- Gene Franklin

To get action out of management, it is necessary to create the illusion of a crisis in the hope it will be acted on.
- Gene Franklin

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of human freedoms -- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances -- to choose one’s own way.
- Viktor Frankl

Todd, drugs. Drugs, Todd ... oh, I see you’ve already met.
- Will Frank

And this is a table ma’am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma’am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"

The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.
- Sir James Frazer

If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.
- Frederick the Great

So, if we use L’hopitals’s Rule, it makes it a little bit easier;...well, two pages easier.
- Dave Freedman, Calculus,

Circumstances can force a generalized incompetent to become competent, at least in a specialized field.
- Frank R. Freemon

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.
- Clement Freud

A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only from those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even it it be a scientific one.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

The goal of all life is death.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

The world is no nursery.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!
- Matt Frewer as Dr. Mike Stratford in "Doctor, Doctor"

No Woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor
- Betty Friedan

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
- Milton Friedman

In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.
- Milton Friedman

There is no free lunch.
- Milton Friedman

I have never forced myself on my wife: I paid her each time.
- Stephen Freind

Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.
- Max Frisch, ’Homo Faber’

But your Honor, I’m desperately trying to *conceal* my contempt for this court.
- Duncan Frissell

Poverty makes people satirical- soberly, sadly bitterly satirical.
- Friswell

Education is helping the child realize his potentialities.
- Erich Fromm

Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He acts against God’s command ... From the standpoint of the Church, which represents authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom.
- Erich Fromm

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
- Erich Fromm

Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development.
- Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D.

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.
- David Frost

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

A poet begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Anyone with an active mind lives on tentatives rather than tenets.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Isn’t it funny that anything the Supreme Court says is right?
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted to my kind of fooling.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The best way out is always through.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working when you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -; 
I took the one less traveled by; 
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

The moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.
- J. A. Froude

I love America. You always hurt the one you love.
- David Frye impersonating Nixon

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.
- Christopher Fry

There is no type of human endeavor where it is so important that the leader understands all phases of his job as that of the profession of arms.
- Major General James C. Fry

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

Art history is the nightmare from which art is struggling to awake.
- Robert Fulford

I have seen the future and it doesn’t work.
- Robert Fulford

No matter how hard you try, there is always going to be someone more underground than you.
- Robert Fulford

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts...
- Robert Fulghum

As the sword of the best-tempered metal is the most flexible; so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behavior to their inferiors.
- Fuller

Choose such pleasures as recreate much, and cost little.
- Fuller

Commonly, physicians, like beer, are best when they are old, and lawyers, like bread, when they are young and new.
- Fuller

Fame may be compared to a scold: the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet.
- Fuller

First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.
- Fuller

He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it may be a saint; that boasteth of it is a devil.
- Fuller

He that spends all his life in sport is like one who wears nothing but fringes and eats nothing but sauces.
- Fuller

If the wicked flourish, and thou suffer, be not discouraged. They are fatted for destruction: thou are dieted for health.
- Fuller

If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf.
- Fuller

If thou hast a loitering servant, send him of thy errand just before his dinner.
- Fuller

Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep, but by worring him to death?
- Fuller

Measure not men by Sundays, without regarding what they do all the week after.
- Fuller

Purchase not friends with gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love.
- Fuller

The blush is nature’s alarm at the approach of sin and her testimony to the dignity of virtue.
- Fuller

The passions, like heavy bodies down steep hills, once in motion, move themselves, and know no ground but the bottom.
- Fuller

Venture not to the utmost bounds of even lawful pleasure; the limits of good and evil join.
- Fuller

A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries....
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Don’t fight forces; use them.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Everything you’ve learned in school as ’obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

God is not a noun; God is a verb.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

I think I am a verb.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

All things are difficult before they are easy.
- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.
- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

The more wit the less courage.
- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir.
- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

He that sips of many arts, drinks of none.
- Fulton

The quality of legislation passed to deal with a problem is inversely proportional to the volume of media clamor that brought it on.
- G. Ray Funkhouser

It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.
- Robert Fuoss

Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.
- J. J. Furnas

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can’t reuse time.
- Merrick Furst

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.
- Paul Fussell

If I didn’t have writing, I’d be running down the street hurling grenades in people’s faces.
- Paul Fussell

If you are an author and give one of your books to a member of the upper class, you must never expect him to read it.
- Paul Fussell

The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower your class.
- Paul Fussell

Innovation is hard to schedule.
- Dan Fylstra



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