M

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.
- General Douglas MacArthur

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
- General Douglas MacArthur

There is no substitute for victory.
- General Douglas MacArthur

I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), 1850

His imagination resembles the wings of an ostrich.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Many politicians ... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

"Right reason," by which Cicero meant, "an immediate and intuitive apprehension of moral and spiritual values," of what is right and just and what is wrong and unjust, was in the nature of things placed by God in all men; and no decree or legislative enactment could change what is right and what is wrong.
- Forest MacDonald

Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
- John D. MacDonald.

The difficulty of getting anything started increases with the square of the of the number of people involved.
- Jim MacGregor

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
- Arthur Machen, "The Hill of Dreams"

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to managment than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince"

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Deceit in the conduct of war outweighs valor and is worthy of merit.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Fortune is a woman. It is necessary, if you wish to master her, to take her by force before she has a chance to resist.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Men are apt to deceive themselves in big things, but they rarely do so in particulars.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Men must either be caressed or annihilated. They will revenge themselves for small injuries, but they can’t do so for great ones. The harm the leader does must be such that he need not fear revenge.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Men often deceive themselves in believing that humility can overcome insolence.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

It is better to be feared than loved, more prudent to be cruel than compassionate.
- Niccolo Machievelli

If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren’t likely to be very good.
- Robert E. Machol

Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination.
- Robert E. Machol

Sometimes, where a complex problem can be illuminated by many tools, one can be forgiven for applying the one he knows best.
- Robert E. Machol

The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.
- Robert E. Machol

There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and implementing one pretty good solution.
- Robert E. Machol

Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
- Ernst Mach

There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us.
- Charles Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions. . ."

The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. . . No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and credulity.
- Charles Mackay

The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren’t even any property taxes.
- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b

There are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a cox comb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove.
- Mackenzie

The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domesticated animal
- Sir Compton MacKenzie

From the horridness of this crime, I do conclude that, of all others, it requires the clearest relevancy and most convincing probature; and I condemn, next to the witches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn persons by thousands as guilty of this crime.
- Sir George Mackenzie

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.
- Sir J. Mackintosh

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.
- Archibald MacLeish

In the early October of that year, in the cathedral hush of a Quebec Indian summer with the lake drawing into its mirror the fire of the maples, it came to me that to be able to love the mystery surrounding us is the final and only sanction of human existence.
- Hugh MacLennan

We have just reached the outer fringes of the Solar System. Can any sane man possibly argue that we should stop there?
- Hugh Maclennan

To be alive at all involves some risk.
- Harold MacMillan, British PM, December 1959

What’s that thing? Well, it’s a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can’t grasp exactly what it does. We call it a two-by-four.
- Jeff MacNelly, "Shoe"

That’s part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity".
- Lester Maddox, ex-governor of Georgia

Why would we have different races if God meant us to be alike and associate with each other?
- Lester Maddox

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. "Justice" is a search for workable customs.
- Dr. Margaret Mader

During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
- James Madison (1751-1836)

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
- James Madison (1751-1836)

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves withthe power which knowledge gives.
- James Madison (1751-1836)

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
- James Madison (1751-1836)

When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.
- James Madison (1751-1836)

The decent moderation of today will be the least human of things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they burn none at all.
- Maurice Maeterlinck

Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don’t add up.
- James Magary

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, 
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
- John Gillespie Magee

An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name.
- Rene Magritte

The cable TV sex channels don’t expand our horizons, don’t make us better people, and don’t come in clearly enough.
- Bill Maher

If facts do not conform to theory, they must be disposed of.
- N. R. F. Maier

Love is what we call the situation which occurs when two people who are sexually comptatible discover that they can also tolerate one another in various other circumstances.
- Marc Maihueird

Elevators traveling in the desired direction are always delayed and on arrival tend to run in pairs, threes of a kind, full houses, etc.
- Pete Maiken

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
- Norman Mailer

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
- Norman Mailer

You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
- Maimonides

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
- Main

’Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
- Malaclypse the Younger

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.
- Bernard Malamud

Her face was like an April morn, Clad in a wint’ry cloud; And clay-cold was her lily hand, That held her sable shroud.
- Mallet

It is the doom of men that they forget.
- Edmund Mallory, "Morte d’Artur"

And joy, after all, is the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
- George Leigh Mallory

There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I’ll have it in the face of death, or it’s useless.
- Hobar Mallow

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
- Andre Malraux

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
- Andre Malraux

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
- Maxwell Maltz

The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
- Lew Mammel, Jr.

Likewise, when a long series of identical computations is to be performed, such as those required for the formation of numerical tables, the machine can be brought into play so as to give several results at the same time, which will greatly abridge the whole amount of the processes.
- General L. F. Manabrea, 1842; referring to Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

Physicists are mathematicians in a hurry.
- Benoit Mandelbrot

Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
- Benoit Mandelbrot

Have you ever seen a plant with its leaves curled up? Have you watered it and watched its leaves spread out again? Almost as quick as that can be the response of a child’s mind to a teacher who knows how to nourish it.
- Morris Mandel

>So, what do *you* do for a living? 
I sit in a chair, pressing small plastic rectangles with my fingers while peering at many tiny, colored dots.
- Peter Manders

The skeptic may be pardoned for thinking that hypertext encourages irrelevance. What the user can end up with is little more than a series of footnotes, marginalia, and "see also" references-- items that have historically been relegated to second-class citizenship in the good old book format, with the added benefit of not having to stare at a lousy screen display to read them. . . Indeed, when you boil it down to its rudiments, hypertext seems to make one major claim: it makes computers work almost as well as books.
- Stephen Manes

The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there.
- Edouard Manet

All things are subject to fixed laws.
- Marcus Manilius

The electron is infinite, capricious, and free, and does not at all share our love for algorithms.
- Yu. I. Manin, A Course in Math. Logic

A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word "but" which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative -- before they tell you. Thus: "I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... " (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut).
- Frank Mankiewicz

In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
- Frank Mankiewicz

People who are excessively concerned about the environment invariably turn out to own a great deal of land. There are damn few unemployed and renters in the ecology movement.
- Frank Mankiewicz

The amount of quaint, authentic, rustic charm varies inversely with the pounds per square inch of water pressure in the shower. High charm, low pressure.
- Frank Mankiewicz

The higher the tuition, the fewer days they spend in school.
- Frank Mankiewicz

The more enthusiastic, unruly, and large the candidate’s crowds in the week before the election, the less likely he is to carry the area.
- Frank Mankiewicz

And in many places beyond the sea 
It is better known than in this countrie 
And therefore the saying, it goes abroad, 
The nearer the church, the further from God.
- Robert Mannying of Brunne, "The Sacrilegious Carrollers", 1303 (a free translation of William of Waddington’s "Manuel des Pechiez")

A house without books is like room without windows.
- Horace Mann

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.
- Thomas Mann

I believe that in actual fact, philosophy ranks before and above the natural sciences.
- Thomas Mann

You can convince anyone of anything if you just push it at them 100% of the time. They may not believe it completely, but they will still use it to form opinions, especially if they have nothing else to draw on.
- Charles Manson

That which is good to be done, cannot be done too soon; and if it is neglected to be done early, it will frequently happen that it will not be done at all.
- Bishop Mant

She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
- Tommy Manville (1894-1967)

I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to even contemplate what I am thinking about.
- Don Mazankowski

The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
- Elisabeth Marbury (1856-1933)

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees.
- Boris Marshalov

The number of letters written to the editor is inversely proportional to the importance of the article.
- Robert L. Marcus

Report writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.
- Tom Margerison, reviewing Bruce M. Cooper’s book "Writing Technical Reports" in 1965

I would call the Democratic Left in Latin America the group which secures social advances for all the people in a framework of freedom and consent.
- Luis Munoz Marin

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
- Ann Marion

Goodness is beauty in its best estate.
- Marlowe

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
- Marlowe

A pessimist is a person who has to listen to too many optimists.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity marry, and perpetuate his kind.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him _whose_?
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

A true capitalist fights with their wallet a true anarchist fights with the opponents wallet
- Jessica Marrell

It’s said that if you can’t say something good about a dead person, don’t say it. Well, I consider him dead.
- Former Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) on President Bush

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
- George C. Marshall

Reach high! The best is always kept Upon life’s topmost shelves, But not beyond our reach if we Will reach beyond ourselves.
- Helen Laurie Marshall

Lord, when we are wrong, make us easy to change. And when we are right, make us easy to live with.
- Peter Marshall

There were also an unexpected number of pictures of dragons with kittens; I find this to be a disturbing trend, mostly because I’m not sure I like the symbolic ideal of dangerous, majestic evil mixed with dragons.
- Steve Marsh, commenting on the NecronomiCon 2003 Art Show

There is no glory in otustripping donkeys.
- Martial (40-102)

Gifts are like hooks.
- Martial (40?-102?)

I write long epigrams, you write nothing. Yours are shorter.
- Martial

You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
- Dean Martin

If it’s against state law, it’s generally considered a breach of Etiquette.
- Judith Martin (Ms. Manners)

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but fooling Usenet doesn’t take much time at all.
- Kevin Martin

A quick response is worth a thousand logical responses.
- Merle P. Martin

Consistency is the product of small minds.
- Merle P. Martin

If it is generally known what one is supposed to be doing, then someone will expect him to do it.
- Merle P. Martin

In any given group, the most will do the least and the least the most.
- Merle P. Martin

In any given miscalculation, the fault will never be placed if more than one person is involved.
- Merle P. Martin

People see what they have been conditioned to see; they refuse to see what they don’t expect to see.
- Merle P. Martin

There is nothing so simple that it cannot be made difficult.
- Merle P. Martin

Mankind is the only one of God’s creatures who will foul his own nest.
- Mildred Martin

The politics of despair in America has typically been the politics of backlash.
- Seymour Martin and Earl Raab

There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.
- Steve Martin

Administration maintains the status quo.
- Thomas L. Martin

All committee reports conclude that, "It is not prudent to change the policy [or procedure, or organization, or whatever] at this time."
- Thomas L. Martin

Committee reports dealing with wages, salaries, fringe benefits, facilities, computers, employee parking, libraries, coffee breaks, secretarial support, etc., always call for dramatic expenditure increases.
- Thomas L. Martin

Faculty purchases of equipment and supplies always increase to match the funds available, so these funds are never adequate.
- Thomas L. Martin

Management directs and controls change.
- Thomas L. Martin

Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest amount of hot air.
- Thomas L. Martin

The faculty expands its activity to fit whatever space is available, so that more space is always required.
- Thomas L. Martin

The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communication between different levels in a heirarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.
- Thomas L. Martin

The professional quality of the faculty tends to be inversely proportional to the importance it attaches to space and equipment.
- Thomas L. Martin

I wasn’t kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.
- Chico Marx (1891-1961)

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977) A Day at the Races - 1936

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977), "Animal Crackers"

Oh, I know it’s a penny here and a penny there, but look at me. I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977), "Monkey Business"

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

It’s not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom window or outside your bedroom, period.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

My mother loved children - she would have given anything if I had been one.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows, marriage does.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

She got her good looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

She’s afraid that if she leaves, she’ll become the live of the party.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of one’s fellow man.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Last words are for people who haven’t said anything in life.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Religion is the opium of the people.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the thing, however, is to change it.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The reward of energy, enterprise, and thrift- is taxes. The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer. The haves get more, the have-nots die. The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

In other words, neutrinos are funky little critters.
- Todd Masco

You’re free to be as much of an asshole as you wish -- as long as I’m not paying for it.
- Todd Masco

Best trust the happy moments... the days that make us happy make us wise.
- John Masefield (1878-1967)

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, 
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, 
And a gray mist on the sea’s face and a gray dawn breaking.
- John Masefield (1878-1967)

Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
- John Masefield (1878-1967)

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
- Abraham Maslow

By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.
- George Mason

As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every minute of time.
- Mason

Time’s gradual touch has moulder’d into beauty many a tower which when it frown’d with all its battlements, was only terrible.
- Mason

To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antidote those miseries that must fall on us.
- Massinger

True dignity is never gained by place, and never won when honors are withdrawn.
- Massinger

You are right on target when you say that mad scientists have a total disregard for the wellbeing of others. We don’t want to spread evil; we just see no point in bothering to spread good.
- Richard M. Mathews

Rebecca’s House Rules: At least one fits every occasion. 1) Throw it on the bed. 2) Fry onions. 3) Call Jenny’s mother. 4) No one’s got the corner on suffering. 5) Run it under the cold tap. 6) Everything takes practice, except being born.
- Sharon Mathews

...what’s the point of making non-addictive drugs illegal? If anything which alters the mental state of the individual is to be illegal in case he’s unable to function in society, can we have a ban on religion please?
- mathew@mantis.co.uk on alt.atheism

PEZ educates the children as well. Break the neck of something cute, and you get something good to eat.
- Stig Sandbeck Mathisen

It is bad luck to be superstitious.
- Andrew W. Mathis

A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a high mountain: everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.
- Professor Leader W. Matsch

You are right on target when you say that mad scientists have a total disregard for the wellbeing of others. We don’t want to spread evil; we just see no point in bothering to spread good.
- Richard M. Mathews

Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words.
- T.S. Matthews

Out of the same substances one stomach will extract nourishment, another poison; and so the same disappointments in life will chasten and refine one man’s spirit, and embitter another’s.
- William Matthews

Talking is a digestive process which is absolutely essential to the mental constitution of the man who devours many books. A full mind must have talk, or it will grow dyspeptic.
- William Matthews

The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, if sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to thepurpose.
- William Matthews

The fullest instruction, and the fullest enjoyment are never derived from books, till we have ventilated the ideas thus obtained, in free and easy chat with others.
- William Matthews

There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes and feelings.
- William Matthews

Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), "A Writer’s Notebook" 1949

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Impropriety is the soul of wit.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

People are never so ready to believe you as when you say things in dispraise of yourself; and you are never so much annoyed as when they take you at your word.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

The great truths are too important to be new.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

The only problem with drawing Nixon is restraint. Your tendency is to let your feelings come out. He’s such a loathsome son of a bitch, and he looks so loathsome.
- Bill Mauldin

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - gunpowder and romantic love.
- Andre Maurois

My soul is an entangled knot, 
Upon a liquid vortex wrought 
Intellect in the Unseen residing. 
And thine doth like a convict sit, 
With marlinspike untwisting it, 
Only to find its knottiness abiding; 
Since all the tools for its untying 
In four-dimensional space are lying.
- James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

I have never been able to understand why it is that just because I am unintelligible nobody can understand me.
- Milton Mayer

Did you know that married men live longer than single men? So, if you want to die a slow death, get married!!!
- Dave Maynard

Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.
- Morrow Mayo

A university is a place where men of principle outnumber men of honor.
- Ernest May

I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to even contemplate what I am thinking about.
- Don Mazankowski

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
- William G. McAdoo

A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.
- Peter McArthur

Some people have so much respect for their superiors they have none left for themselves.
- Peter McArthur

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art.
- Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
- Charlie McCarthy

When I get smitten, I stay smut.
- Charlie McCarthy

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important.
- Eugene McCarthy

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It’s called ’rain’.
- Michael McClary in alt.fusion

Liberals, but not conservatives, can get attention and acclaim for denouncing liberal policies that failed; and liberals will inevitably capture the ensuing agenda for "reform."
- John McClaughry

Politicians who vote huge expenditures to alleviate problems get reelected; those who propose structural changes to prevent problems get early retirement.
- John McClaughry

When it’s not needed, zoning works fine; when it is essential, it always breaks down.
- John McClaughry

The first rule of magic is simple. Don’t waste you time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do.
- McCloctnick the Lucid

Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit.
- David McCord

Let him turn er solar system would see in our species, which has tended to be cruel, destructive, wasteful, and irrational, the crown and apex of cosmic evolution. Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a transitional species makes more sense- and gives us more hope.
- Betty McCollister, Our Transitional Species

Windows was supposed to be a stepping stone to OS2. In fact, it stepped all over OS2.
- Tom McConnell

God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place.
- J.D. McCoughey

Pieces of seven! Pieces of seven! (Hrm, parroty error)
- Bob McCown

I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
- Paul McCracken

well balanced meal: to have selected items from both the left and right sides of the vending machine.
- Aleecia McDonald

Worriers spend a lot of time shoveling smoke.
- Claude McDonald

The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some.
- Dwight MacDonald

To a Europe exhausted by nearly two centuries of religious wars, [Isaac] Newton’s works were first and foremost a message about God; that He did not behave in a capricious or arbitrary fashion, in response to either His will or human prayer, but in accordance with absolute, unwavering, and humanly discoverable laws of nature which governed him and all his works. He had become the infinitely perfect Clock-Maker, his works fathomable by the human mind.
- Forrest MacDonald

There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure.
- Ross MacDonald

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.
- J. P. McEvoy

Unix is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit" experience.
- Colin McFadyen in alt.folklore.computers

I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
- George McGovern

It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil, . . . that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it’s not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure.
- George McGovern

Man is a blind, witless, low-brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth.
- Ian McHarg

The increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague

Donate to the Slaughter the Children Fund and we will support the activities of off-duty police officers in Rio in their important work, ridding that fair city of thieving little scum-children from the favelas. For a pledge of just $10 a month, we will send you an account of your child’s last moments, together with a picture. We regret that your donations are not tax-deductible as yet.
- Brett McInnes (matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg)

To her, love was like the air of heaven- invisible, intangible; it yet encircled her soul, and she knew it; for in it was her life.
- Miss M’Intosh

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
- Alan McKay

Of course, the person I was fleeing most fearfully was myself, for I drive, and I’m burning a collapsed barn behind the house next week because it is much the cheapest way to deal with it, and I live on about four hundred times the money that Thoreau conclusively proved was enough, so I’ve done my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn it into a science fair project.
- Bill McKibbon, "The End of Nature

The length of any meeting is inversely proportional to the length of the agenda for that meeting.
- G. Robert McLaughlin

If you are brave too often, people will come to expect it of you.
- Mignon McLaughlin

If you jot down every silly thought that pops into your mind, you will soon find out everything you most seriously believe.
- Mignon McLaughlin

It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
- Mignon McLaughlin

The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
- Mignon McLaughlin

Concerning attributions: Even if we DID quote anybody in this business, it probably would be gibberish.
- Thom Mcleod

Art is anything you can get away with.
- Marshall McLuhan.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.
- Marshall McLuhan

God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world.
- Ed McMahon

There seems to be a strong correlation between people who relish tough football and people who relish intimidating and beating the hell out of Commies, hippies, protest marchers and other opposition groups. Watching well-advertised strong men knock other people around, make them hurt, is in the end like other tastes. It does not weaken with feeding. It grows.
- John McMurtry

Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of being expressed in a single declarative sentence that is obviously true once stated.
- John McNaughton

If they threw a little Dell server on your desk, you’d be about as close to delivering a reliable, scalable, usable Web service as if I threw a piston ring on your table and said drive to Chicago
- Scott McNealy

If you are not confused, you have not been paying attention.
- Dave McNeely

The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat.
- John McNulty

What is termed "disrespect for law" in fact may only be the manifestation of a burning desire for justice. Order, like law, to be respected, must deserve respect. Disrespect for an order that does not deserve respect ought not to be condemned as degeneration, but commended as a healthy regeneration. What I am concerned about is that lawyers and judges too often regard "order" as a shield for the protection of privilege.
- J.C. McRuer

I owe the government $3400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat.
- Michael McShane

Xerox: A trademark for a photocopying device that can make rapid reproductions of human error, perfectly.
- Merle L. Meacham

A lover’s like a hunter- if the game be got with too much ease he cares not for’t.
- Margaret Mead

I think the most optimistic thing is that we are still here! We have attained the capacity to destroy the planet and haven’t done it. The longer we don’t do it, the better chance we have.
- Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing ever has.
- Margaret Mead

We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.
- Margaret Mead

Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
- Margaret Mead

The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum.
- Menander (342? - 292? BC)

If a person (a) is sick, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better, and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble"

Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It is an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth century thought.
- Sir Peter Medawar

The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.
- Sir Peter Medawar

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein - it rejects it.
- Sir Peter Medawar

No matter which train you are waiting for, the wrong one comes first.
- J. R. Meditz

You couldn’t even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

The wages of sin are death, but the benefits include dental, major medical, two week paid vacation, pension fund, and stock options. Actually, taken as a package, it’s a rather attractive deal.
- Tim Mefford

Helping one another with simple chores, watching over each others homes, sharing needs like food and firewood, simple fellowship. These things make for true community spirit.
- Conrad Meinecke

Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.
- Golda Meir

In a bureaucracy every routing slip will expand until it contains the maximum number of names that can be typed in a vertical column, namely, twenty-seven.
- Daniel Melcher

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less here is essayed.
- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-- a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.
- Louis Menand

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) on Shakespeare

In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), "A Popular Virtue"

...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), "The Allied Arts"

[T]here is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), "The Divine Afflatus"

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes- that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once-and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), 1930

There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), 1930

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), on Shakespeare

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

All zoos actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Any man who, having a child or children he can’t support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Congress consists of 1/3, more or less, scoundrels; 2/3, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Don’t overestimate the decency of the human race.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Faith: An illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Government, today, is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world; there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters; they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Lawer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Men have a much better time of it than woemn; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

New York: A third-rate Babylon.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Sentimental or not, I confess that the predicament of poor Valentino touched me. It provided grist for my mill, but I couldn’t quite enjoy it. Here was a young man who was living daily the dream of millions of other young men. Here was one who was catnip to women. Here was one who had wealth and fame. And here was one who was very unhappy.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one’s wife’s relatives.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way. Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality, and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation, and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing beyond the grave. Such childish proofs are typically theological, and they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents...
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The worshiper is the father of the gods.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

There’s no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Love cures people--both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
- Dr. Karl Menninger

Your mental health will be better if you have lots of fun outside of that office.
- Dr. William Menninger

Thought alone is eternal.
- Owen Meredith

Like most intellectuals, he is imensely stupid.
- Marquise de Merteuil

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of Hell.
- Thomas Merton

God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the lion
- Fernand Mery

There’s never time to do it right but always time to do it over.
- John K. Meskimen

He knew what’s what, and that’s as high As metaphysics wit can fly.
- Meta

They can have my RSA key when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
- Perry Metzger (pmetzger@shearson.com)

There is a lot more to Mathematics than Arithmetic. Arithmetic is no more Mathematics than knowing the names of the notes is Music.
- Shmuel ("Seymour") J. Metz

I only overthrow governments for pay
- Jeff Meyer

It is always convenient to have villains whom you can have no qualms about seeing shot, blown up, or run over by large man-made objects; the Gestapo are particularly appropriate for this.
- Jeff Meyer

pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department.
- Jeff Meyer

We could have set up our machines as Andrew workstations and relied solely on Computing & Communications and AC&M for software and support. However, our early experiences with Andrew led us to choose another path.
- Mike Meyer, Nov. 1991 _Cursor_, on the Statistics department computer setup

Who says MS-DOS isn’t multitasking? You just need one box per task!
- Mike Meyer, mwmeyer@ingres.com

Please try to limit the amount of ’this room doesn’t have any bazingas’ until you are told that those rooms are ’punched out.’ Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
- N. Meyrowitz

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.
- Michelangelo

What manly eloquence could produce such an effect as woman’s silence.
- Michelct

My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
- James A. Michener

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
- James Michner, "Space"

Virtue itself often offends when coupled with bad manners.
- Middleton

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to?
- Bette Midler

Where you stand depends upon where you sit.
- Rufus Miles

100 pages of comments will not make a poorly written page of code not suck.
- Robert Mollitor

My candle burns at both ends; 
It will not last the night; 
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --- 
It gives a lovely light.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), "First Fig" (1920)

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another- it is one damn thing over and over.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

The rain has such a friendly sound to one who’s six feet underground.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.
- Arthur Miller

This place makes Mayberry look like a think tank.
- Dennis Miller (told to me by a CV employee)

Queensboro president Donald Mannis, charged with receiving bribes in exchange for city contracts, resigned on Tuesday. Mannis feels he must devote more time to impending litigation, some of which might emanate from a recent statement he made comparing New York Mayor Ed Koch to Nazi Martin Bormann. A spokesman from the Bormann estate said they are weighing the odds of a slander suit. Mayor Koch could naturally be reached for comment, but we chose not to listen.
- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live"

That’s the news, and I am outta here!
- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live"

I have the distinction of speaking to you from one of the few countries that still has a communist party.
- Dennis Miller, MCing the 1991 Emmies

In regards to Oral Roberts’ claim that God told him that he would die unless he received $20 million by March, God’s lawyers have stated that their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that if I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago.
- Dennis Miller, SNL News

A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a message. Apparently that message is, "Hey, look at me, I’m an idiot.
- Dennis Miller, talk-show host

If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka.
- Dennis Miller

Most of the people obsessed with the America’s cup are trendy jerks who hadn’t even heard of it a year ago.
- Dennis Miller

Most people have the attention span of a ferret on a double expresso.
- Dennis Miller

The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody’s out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now?
- Dennis Miller

The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.
- George Miller

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980), "The Colossus of Maroussi"(1941)

It’s good to be just plain happy; it’s a little better to know that you’re happy; but to understand that you’re happy and to know why and how, in what way, because of what concatenation of events or circumstances, and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well, that is beyond happiness -- that is bliss, and if you have any sense you ought to kill yourself on the spot and be done with it
- Henry Miller (1891-1980), "The Colossus of Maroussi"

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980), "Tropic of Capricorn"

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980), "Tropic of Capricorn"

It’s silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980)

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980)

When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
- Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Unless you put your money to work for you, you work for your money.
- Joe Miller

People are so busy lengthening their lives with exercise they don’t have time to live them.
- Johathan Miller

Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The only satisfaction comes from survival.
- Jonathan Miller

The yoo-hoo you yoo-hoo into the forest is the yoo-hoo you get back.
- Merle Miller

The corruption in a country is in inverse proportion to its state of development.
- Nathan Miller

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
- Olin Miller

I’ve created a new college council and we’re going to submit the proposal to them as soon as they exist.
- Phil Miller

Ignorance is king, many would not prosper by its abdication.
- Walter Miller, "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your thing.
- Warren Miller

Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
- Dave Millman

The distance from the gate from which you flight departs is inversely proportionate to the time remaining before the scheduled departure of the flight.
- Edward S. Mills

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty" 1859 (1806-1873)

... all ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty"

In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendancy of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), "On Liberty"

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one--if he had the power-would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The great creative individual is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that Nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.
- A.A. Milne

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

As good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

For evil news rides post, while good news baits.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires and fears, is more than a king.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Love is a god Strong, free, unabounded, and as some define Fears nothing, pitieth none.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Love me little, love me long.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Nothing lovelier can be found in woman, than to study household good, and good works in her husband to promote.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

The mind is its own place, and in itself, it can make heaven of Hell.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

What hath night to do with sleep?
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Where no hope is left, is left no fear.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Yet I argue not Against heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.
- J. G. C. Minchin

In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.
- Michael T. Minerath

.. remarked that anyone could learn Lisp in 1 day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take 3 days.
- Marvin Minsky

I bet the human brain is a kludge.
- Marvin Minsky

The way to write a program: Debug the null program until it does what you want.
- Marvin Minsky

Tech Services - We Aim To Please, We Shoot To Kill
- H. Wade Minter, in alt.sysadmin.recovery

Better to throw it out-than throw it in.
- Skinny Mitchell

I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
- Nancy Mitford

To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.
- Nancy Mitford

To err is human; to forgive is simply not our policy
- MIT Assasination Club slogan

I think the problem isn’t the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate in our world, but the rate at which we can assimiliate it. Science, engineering, and technology do not yield the ’whys’ of truth; only the ’hows.’ In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works.
- Eugene Miya, NASA Ames Research Center

An architecture in hand is worth 4 or 5 in vapor."
- Eugene Miya

Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your effort to believe it.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you and education.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Over in Hollywood they almost made a great picture, but they caught it in time.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Some of the greatest love affairs I’ve known have involved one actor - unassisted.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction to a tedious book.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

What goes in must come back out.
- Van Mizzell, Jr.

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
- Mohammed

GNU Emacs is a LISP operating system disguised as a word processor.
- Doug Mohney, in comp.arch

The fan awaits the shit, madame.
- Moliere, "The Misanthrope"

Life is something that everyone should try at least once.
- Michael Moncur

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
- Ashley Montague

The Good Book" - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.
- Ashley Montague

The idea is to die young as late as possible.
- Ashley Montague

To be free of bondage or restraint, to live under a government based on the consent of the citizens, these are basic among all freedoms, and this is the reason why a democracy is from every possible humane point of view the best form of government. What so many human beings in the modern world have failed to understand is that freedom is the greatest of all trusts.
- Ashley Montague

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
- Charles Edward Montague

When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the confounding or perverting history or truth, inflating the mind, or committing violence upon the understanding.
- Lady Montague

Writers of novels and romances in general bring a double loss on their readers, they rob them both of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things that never have been, nor are likely to be; either confounding or perverting history or truth, inflating the mind, or committing violence upon the understanding.
- Lady Montague

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
- Mary Wortley Montague

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

Cicero’s style bores me. When I have spent an hour reading him and try to recollect what I have extracted, I usually find it nothing but wind.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

He who has not a good memory, should never take upon him the trade of lying.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

The thing in the world I am most of afraid of is fear, and with good reason, that passion alone in the trouble of it exceeding other accidents.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

We can be Knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
- Baron de Montesquieu

I have ever held it as a maxim, never to do that through another, which it was possible for me to execute myself.
- Baron de Montesquieu

If Europe should ever be ruined, it will be by its warriors.
- Baron de Montesquieu

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
- Baron de Montesquieu

What the orators want in depth, they give you in length.
- Baron de Montesquieu

Most affections are habits or duties we lack the courage to end.
- Henri de Montherlant

I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not. But I’m sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails will be filled with good people.
- Daniel P. Monynihan

Those who curse the universe, curse that which is deaf. Those who shake their fists, shake them at blind stars.
- Michael Moorcock

In fact, one thing that I have noticed . . . is that all of these conspiracy theories depend on the perpetrators being endlessly clever. I think you’ll find the facts also work if you assume everyone is endlessly stupid.
- Brian E. Moore

If there were no husbands, who would look after our mistresses?
- George Moore

Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it, and that a very severe one.
- Hannah Moore

Small habits well pursued, betimes, May reach the dignity of crimes.
- Hannah Moore

The keen spirit Seized the prompt occasion- makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes.
- Hannah Moore

Bean, I still haven’t had a Macintosh walk up to me and give me a blow job. 
You’re not treating them right.
- Hugh Moore and Bean

Computer-based management information systems will cure most review and control problems.
- Richard F. Moore

Cost consciousness and sophisticated design are basically incompatible.
- Richard F. Moore

High salaries equals happiness equals project success.
- Richard F. Moore

If enough reports are prepared and technical reviews are held, negative information will always filter its way to senior management.
- Richard F. Moore

In order to keep engineers and scientists cognizant of the importance of xprogress, load them down with forms, multiple reports, and frequent meetings.
- Richard F. Moore

Remember, the more engineering projects there are, the more products there will be.
- Richard F. Moore

Scientists and engineers set high performance standards for themselves; therefore, performance appraisal and career planning are perfunctory.
- Richard F. Moore

Since blue-sky projects are targeted for major breakthroughs, they are relatively immune from planning and control.
- Richard F. Moore

The expenditure of funds is critical- engineers and scientists should not be permitted to authorize any purchase.
- Richard F. Moore

The greater the number of professionals (advanced degrees preferred) assigned to a project, the greater the progress.
- Richard F. Moore

The less management demands of engineers and scientists, the greater their productivity.
- Richard F. Moore

Vastly improved review and control will result by promoting the most productive engineers to management positions.
- Richard F. Moore

Figure out how long it’ll take, and multiply by two. (Significant pause) The hard part is figuring how many times to multiply by two.
- Roger Moore

I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor.
- Roger Moore

Some people get the point right away and therefore never learn anything.
- Clement Moorman, a middle-school science teacher

You don’t *run* programs on Ultrix. 
Right, you chase them.
- Mark Moraes and Rayan Zachariassen

We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life.
- Hans Moravec on artificial intelligence

Feed yourself and feed others. Then, if you have to say good - bye, it won’t matter. You will have shared love.
- Jeanne Moreau

Avoid falsehoods like the plague except in matters of taxation, which do not count, since here your are not lying to take someone else’s goods, but to prevent your own from being unjustly seized.
- Giovanni Morelli

Architecture is the printing press of all ages, and gives a history of the state in which it was conducted.
- Lady Morgan

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.
- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.
- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated, but not signed.
- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

The trouble with wedlock is that there’s not enough wed and too much lock.
- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
- John Morley

Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.
- John, Viscount Morley

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.
- Robert Morely

Show me a man who has enjoyed his school days and I’ll show you a bully and a bore.
- Robert Morely

The words _figure_ and _fictitious_ both derive from the same Latin root _fingere_. Beware!
- M.J. Moroney

Those cave paintings are wonderful, but like everything we know, they are not too wonderful to be true. It is their reality that gives them wonder, and while there will never come a time when some of us will not wish for more than we can have, the happiest of us will wait confidently for other tangible finds. We treasure the cave at Altamira where a century ago a little girl first saw the great painted bison. New caves will be found, year after year, in lab or clinic or sky or ocean depth, or even in ancient markings. That is the promise of real science, which cannot allow wish to rule mind, but nonetheless finds unendingly wonderful things.
- Philip Morrison

A woman is more of a computer, and a man is more of a car.
- Jan Morris

The mail transport mechanism is trivial.
- Jim Morris

How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low success.
- Lewis Morris

The person who walks alone is soon trailed by the FBI.
- Wright Morris

Any party that takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.
- Dwight W. Morrow

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit
- Dwight W. Morrow

I work in celestial mechanics, but I am not interested in getting to the moon.
- Marston Morse

I taught Sunday School, if you can believe that... but I never tried to make them believe anything that I didn’t believe myself, which meant that I did most of my teaching out of _Winnie-The-Pooh_
- Polar Bear Morse

If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.
- Samuel F. B. Morse

Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of.
- David Moser

It’s better to retire too soon than too late.
- Charles A. Mosher

He who hesitates is poor.
- Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock in "The Producers"

Truth I have no trouble with, it’s the facts I get all screwed up.
- Farley Mowat

Architects believe that not only do they sit at the right hand of God, but that if God ever gets up, they take the chair.
- Karen Moyer, Design

The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.
- Malcolm Muggeridge

Travel, of course, narrows the mind.
- Malcolm Muggeridge

Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.
- Frank Muir

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
- John Muir (1838-1914)

The probability of an event’s occurring varies directly with the perversity of the inanimate object involved and inversely with product of its desirability and the effort expended to produce it.
- Walter Mule

The Russian dictatorship of the proletariat has made a a farce of the whole Marxist vision: developing a powerful, privileged ruling class to prepare for a classless society, setting up the most despotic state in history so that the state may wither away, establishing by force a colonial empire to combat imperialism and unify the workers of the world.
- Herbert J. Muller

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
- Martin Mull

It’s hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with.
- Martin Mull

Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.
- Martin Mull

Knowledge is power if you know it about the right person.
- Ethel Mumford (1878-1940)

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
- Lewis Mumford

If you don’t say it, they can’t repeat it.
- Wilbur C. Munnecke

Always sort the small file first.
- Dick Munroe

The best programmers, designers, and architects are lazy.
- Dick Munroe

The things in this file don’t have to be in bad taste, they just have to leave a bad taste.
- Dick Munroe

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for more assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

He is one of those peple who would be enormously improved by death
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

You can’t expect a boy to be vicious till he’s been to a good school.
- H. H. Munro (Saki, 1870-1916)

Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell.
- Clint Murchison, Jr.

Power Users think ’Your computer is stoned’ is part of the DOS copyright banner.
- Richard Murnane

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
- Edsel Murphy

The seal of truth is on thy gallant form, for none but cowards lie.
- Murphy

No job too big; no fee too big!
- Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman, "Ghostbusters"

I don’t have to take this abuse from you - I’ve got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me.
- Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer.
- Edward R. Murrow

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
- Edward R. Murrow

The amount of research devoted to a topic in human behavior is inversely proportional to its importance and interest.
- Bernard I. Murstein

Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
- Miyamoto Musashi, 1645

THe people of Rome have always destroyed their greatest sons.
- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.
- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to face it.
- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
- Ellyn Mustard

In a Democracy only those laws which have their bases in folkways or the approval of strong groups have a chance of being enforced.
- Abraham Myerson

I have pantyhose older than you are.
- Jean Myers (JGM’s Mom) to Rob Earhart

He obviously didn’t realize who I am. Sure, that sounds a bit pretentious... but it’s true.
- John Myers

Show-page or no show-page-- there is no ’try’.
- John Myers

So, Is it too early to hose andrew?
- John Myers

Super-seniors, or tenured students?
- John Myers

Education has in America’s whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.
- Gunnar Myrdal

OK, here’s another attitude: I think that people who collect comix solely for financial reasons have a separate level of Hell reserved for themselves after they die. I don’t know for sure, but I’m trying to confirm it, because I plan to contribute to the construction fees.
- Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer

pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department.
- Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer

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