Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
- Jack Paar
I think there’s something to be said for a completely random user-interface policy - it keeps the users guessing, making life more interesting for people who deal with the casual X users. As for the screen display, at least you can’t claim that people are mesmorized by sexy glitz which distracts them from the work at hand.
- Keith Packard
Avoid fried foods which angry up the blood.
- Satchel Paige
Avoid running at all times.
- Satchel Paige
Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as the social ramble ain’t restful.
- Satchel Paige
If your stomach disputes you, pacify it with cool thoughts.
- Satchel Paige
Keep the juices going by jangling around gently as you move.
- Satchel Paige
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), "The Rights of Man," (1791):
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of our men and women. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself.
- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
Die my dear Doctor? That’s the last thing I shall do!
- Palmerston (PM of GB (c1850?))
Socialism is workable only in heaven where it isn’t needed, and in hell where they’ve got it.
- Cecil Palmer
Of course, to join the NSA, all you really have to do is pick up any phone, anywhere, make a long-distance call, and say ’National Security Agency, I’d like a job.’ They’ll check you out and either give you a job, or do a job on you.
- David Palmer
The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.
- Preem Palver, First Speaker
The bread and onions you ate this morning tasted better than any feast to a man who expects to eat again, and the sun through the grills overhead is brighter for you than for any man who expects to see it rise tomorrow.
- Pandarus the Gladiator
...and how are you going to make education easy? You might as well try to build an athlete by keeping him in a hammock with cream puffs and beer.
- Edgar Pangborn
Never date a woman you can hear ticking.
- Mark Patinkin
There is an inverse relationship between the uniqueness of an observation and the number of investigators who report it simultaneously.
- A. B. Pardee
The meek shall inherit the earth--the rest of us will move on..
- Sameer Parekh
People may like what third-party candidates say, because often they are the only ones saying anything, but they usually won’t vote for someone who doesn’t have a chance. Since third-party candidates are not in the news, they are considered to be not really in the race; and since they are not in the race, this justifies treating them as if they are not news.
- Michael Parenti
A web site is the high tech equivalent of a dog marking a lamp post.
- Matthew Paris
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Ducking for apples - change one letter and it’s the story of my life.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Four be the things I’d have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I went to a convent in New York and was fired finally for my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
If all these sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit suprises.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
One more drink and I’ll be under the host.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Scratch an actor - and you’ll find an actress.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
That woman speaks eight languages and can’t say no in any of them.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
The ladies men admire, I’ve heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They’d rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints ... So far, I’ve had no complaints.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
There’s little in taking or giving, There’s little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest’s for a clam in a shell, So I’m thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell?
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Every so often someone comes along and tries to re-invent the wheel, but usually ends up with an octogon that has an off-center hole.
- E. N. Parker
The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.
- Ed Parker
Reforms come from below. No man with four aces howls for a new deal.
- John F. Parker
Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind.
- C. Northcote Parkinson
Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse.
- C. Northcote Parkinson
Math is the art of avoiding computation.
- B. Parlett (UC Professor), 1989.
When anyone says ’theoretically,’ they really mean ’not really.’
- David Parnas
A meeting lasts at least one and a half hours, however short the agenda.
- Denys Parsons
A piece of electronic equipment is housed in a beautifully designed cabinet, and at the side or on top is a little box containing the components which the designer forgot to make room for.
- Denys Parsons
A place you want to get to is always just off the edge of the map you happen to have handy.
- Denys Parsons
If you break a cup or plate, it will not be the one that was already chipped or cracked.
- Denys Parsons
You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.
- Dolly Parton
Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees(II,72)
All the troubles of man comes from his not knowing how to sit still.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Procrastination is the thief of time.
- John Dos Pasos
You’ll find in no park or city A monument to a committee.
- Victoria Pasternak
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.
- Louis Pasteur
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
- Louis Pasteur
My neighbor is a real energy saver-hasn’t been out of his hammock all summer.
- Phil Pastoret
Even paranoids have enemies.
- Jim Pastore
On alcohol: four is one more than more than enough.
- Jim Pastore
This job is marginally better than daytime TV.
- Jim Pastore
The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away - leaving people with nothing more to stand on than what they have so bloody well stood for up to now.
- Kenneth Patchen
It should be understood by those skilled in the art that a Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, which is separate from the operating system...
- Patent Number 5794230 - Microsoft patent lawyers shoot their anti-trust lawyers in the ass
An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.
- John H. Patterson
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
- Gen. George S. Patton, "War As I Knew It", 1947
Practically everyone but myself is a pusillanimous son of a bitch.
- Gen. George S. Patton, Letter to Col. Codman, 1945.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
- Gen. George S. Patton
You don’t win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making the other poor bastard die for his country
- Gen. George S. Patton
If a person wants to be atheistic it’s his God-given right to be an atheist.
- Michael Patton
Success is the result of behavior that completely contradicts the usual expectations about the behavior of a successful person.
- Felix R. Paturi
The amount of success is in inverse proportion to the effort in attaining success.
- Felix R. Paturi
This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague.
We are upping our standards,...so up yours.
- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles
- Pat Paulsen
If you wish peace, work for justice.
- Pope Paul VI
To know the world one must construct it.
- Cesare Pavese
What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science? ...Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.
- Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Education: A debt due from present to future generations.
- George Peabody
I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.
- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Science is one thing and Wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.
- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it. the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it.
- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
A masterful retreat is itself a victory.
- Norman Vincent Peale
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
- Norman Vincent Peale
Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system.
- Norman Vincent Peale
We are all descendents of Adam and we are all products of racial miscegenation.
- Lester B. Pearson
You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
- Alan J. Perlis
A chicken doesn’t stop scratching just because the worms are scarce.
- John Peers
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
- John Peers
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
- Charles Peguy
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
- Charles Sanders Peirce
There is a tendency among some Pagans to want to be back in, let us say, sixth-century Wales instead of wanting a _transformed_ world. Going back to sixth-century Wales is a fantasy that is dear to me. It’s part of the archetypal dream. But that is all it is. Nobody really wants to go back into the past except a bunch of space cookies. It is not modern technology that is desensitizing. It is the misuse of it that is.
- Gwydion Pendderwen
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
- Alexander Penney
I am grateful for all my problems. As each of them was overcome I became stronger and more able to meet those yet to come. I grew on all my difficulties.
- J. C. Penney
Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit down without one.
- William Penn
Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train.
- Penrose
Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
- Erik Pepke
Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.
- Samuel Pepys
Behind every great man there is a surprised woman.
- Maryon Pearson
I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boast of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate, the scorn of all who know the worth of mind and virtue.
- Percival
A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartettes, chamber music, and cantatas.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
There is nothing like a good painstaking survey full of decimal points and guarded generalizations to put a glaze like a Sung vase on your eyeball.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
When I returned to the soil, I had a ten-cent screwdriver and the mechanical skill of a turtle. Today, thanks to unremitting study, I can change a fuse so deftly that it plunges the entire county into darkness.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
You’ll have to leave my meals on a tray outside the door because I’ll be working pretty late on the secret of making myself invisible, which may take me almost until eleven o’clock.
- S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
Come quickly, I am tasting stars!
- Dom Perignon (1638-1715) at the moment of his discovery of champagne
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
- Alan J. Perlis, "Epigrams of Programming"
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
- Alan J. Perlis
Both knowledge and wisdom extend man’s reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.
- Alan J. Perlis
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
- Alan J. Perlis
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
- Alan J. Perlis
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
- Alan J. Perlis
You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
- Alan J. Perlis
I am not in this world to live up to other people’s expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.
- Fritz Perls
He conquers who endures.
- Perseus
Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards.
- Soren F. Petersen
If you don’t know what to do, call the media and at least give the appearance of doing something.
- David Peterson
Genius is lasting 5 minutes longer than the other side.
- Donald Petersen
American induction is when you do something three times and get the idea.
- Dr. Karl Petersen (UNC Professor)
History shows that money will multiply in volume and divide in value over the long run. Or expressed differently, the purchasing power of currency will vary inversely with the magnitude of the public debt.
- William H. Peterson
Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.
- Irene Peter, Southern California Oracle
The Rockettes are so perfect you’d think they were Xeroxed.
- Irene Peter
If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.
- Laurance J. Peter
In every hierarchy, whether it be government or business, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.
- Laurance J. Peter
Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.
- Laurance J. Peter
Peter’s Inversion: Internal consistency is valued more highly than efficiency.
- Laurance J. Peter
Peter’s Law: The unexpected always happens.
- Laurance J. Peter
Peter’s Paradox: Employees in a hierarchy do not really object to incompetence in their colleagues.
- Laurance J. Peter
Peter’s Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
- Laurance J. Peter
Peter’s Theorem: Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.
- Laurance J. Peter
Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
- Laurance J. Peter
A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.
- Laurence J. Peter
All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man’s ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.
- Laurence J. Peter
America is a country that doesn’t know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
- Laurence J. Peter
An economist is an expert who will know tommorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
- Laurence J. Peter
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
- Laurence J. Peter
Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.
- Laurence J. Peter
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
- Laurence J. Peter
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
- Laurence J. Peter
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to the garage makes you a car.
- Laurence J. Peter
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teen-ager wondering about each other.
- Laurence J. Peter
If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.
- Laurence J. Peter
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
- Laurence J. Peter
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings.
- Laurence J. Peter
She has as much originality as a Xerox machine.
- Laurence J. Peter
The modern child will answer you back before you’ve said anything.
- Laurence J. Peter
If you can’t measure it, I’m not interested.
- Lawrence J. Peter
This is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left.
- peter@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com
Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds.
- Petrarch
How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.
- Petrarch
I’m sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life.
- Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, AD 66, attr. to Gaius Petronus
We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation
- Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, AD 66, attr. to Gaius Petronus
Heroin wasn’t around then. It was introduced as a "safe" alternative to morphine, just as methadone was then introduced as a "safe" alternative to heroin. As usual, the drug problem had to be continuously invented, or there would not be one.
- Christopher Pettus
Windows/NT - From the people who brought you EDLIN"
- Herb.Peyerl@novatel.cuc.ab.ca
The mind ought sometimes to be amused, that it may the better return to thought, and to itself.
- Phaedrus
An unexpectedly easy-to-handle sequence of events will be immediately followed by an equally long sequence of trouble.
- Charles Phelps
The consciousness of clean linen is in and of itself a source of moral strength only second to that of a clean conscience. A well-ironed collar, or a fresh glove, has carried many a man through the emergency in which a wrinkle or a rip would have defeated him.
- E. E. Phelps
Our best work is done when it needs to be.
- F. Phelps
Any plumbing pipes you choose to replace during renovation will prove to be in excellent condition; those you decide to leave in place will be rotten.
- Lew Phelps
Any renovation project on an old house will cost twice as much and take three times as long as originally estimated.
- Lew Phelps
The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to deal with: sudden death.
- Michael Phelps
I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky, but there’s never any gum under any of them.
- Emo Philips
My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.
- Emo Philips
Women! Ya can’t live with ’em and ya can’t get ’em to wear skimpy little Nazi outfits.
- Emo Phillips
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
- Wendell Phillips
What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step toward something better.
- Wendell Phillips
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Eden Phillpotts
A study of the science of technology defines what is possible; a study of the economics of technology establishes which of the possibilities is practical and useful.
- Montgomery Phister
He deservedly loses his own property who covets that of another.
- Phoedrus
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Every Child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Good taste is the enemy of creativity
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.
- Thomas Pickering
After all, what was Medea? Just another child custody case.
- Frank Pierson
If you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.
- L. R. Pierson
We must never forget that the ultimate purpose of an explosive is to explode.
- Petri Pihko
Success provides more opportunities to say things than the number of things a pundit has worth saying.
- Douglas Pike
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
- Rob Pike on X
Success is overrated. Incompetence is what we should revere- it marks us off from animals.
- Stephen Pile
A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
- Arthur Wing Pinero
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself.
- Robert M. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
- Robert M. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ’Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.
- Robert M. Pirsig
My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.
- Robert M. Pirsig
Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of society. It is justified because the program can give a sense of shared adventure and achievement to the society at large.
- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh
Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French tete (head or face, as in tete-a-tete: head to head or face to face). Hence polytetien, a person of two or more faces.
- Martin Pitt
Don’t talk to me about a man’s being able to talk sense; everyone can talk sense- can he talk nonsense?
- William Pitt the Elder
Education belongs pre-eminently to the church ... neutral or lay schools from which religion is excluded are contrary to the fundamental principles of education.
- Pope Pius XI
LA needs the cleansing of a great disaster or founding of a barricaded commune.
- Peter Plagens
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
- Max Planck
But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict Socrates.
- Plato (427?-347 BC) in Symposium
... Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded...
- Plato (427?-347 BC), "Phaedrus"
...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded...
- Plato (427?-347 BC), "Phaedrus"
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
- Plato (427?-347 BC), "The Republic"
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
- Plato (427?-347 BC), "The Republic"
As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
He was a wise man who invented God.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
No human thing is of serious importance.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Philosophy is the highest music.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Until philosophers are kings ... cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race.
- Plato (427?-347 BC)
Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues. ("Puppies and pigs have a very different smell.")
- Plautus
Evil habits soil a fine dress more than mud; good manners, by their deeds, easily set off a lowly garb.
- Plautus
If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purposes of your own. When you ask for it back again, you find a friend made an enemy by your own kindness. If you begin to press still further- either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.
- Plautus
Keep what you’ve got; the ills that we know are the best.
- Plautus
A liberal is a person whose interests aren’t at stake, at the moment.
- Willis Player
It is ordinary for us to poison rivers also; yea and the very elements whereof the world doth stand, are by us infected: for even the air itself, wherein and whereby all things should live, we corrupt to their mischief and destruction.
- Pliny The Elder
Now, that the sovereign power and deity, whatsoever it is, should have regard of mankind, is a toy and vanity worthy to be laughed at.
- Pliny The Elder
So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain. . .
- Pliny The Elder
Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.
- Pliny The Elder
To conclude, all other living creatures live orderly and well, after their own kind: we see them flock and gather together, and ready to make head and stand against all others of a contrary kind: the lions as fell and savage as they be, fight not with one another: serpents sting not serpents, nor bite one another with their venomous teeth: nay the very monsters and huge fishes of the sea, war not amongst themselves in their own kind: but believe me, man at man’s hand receiveth most harm and mischief.
- Pliny The Elder
Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?
- Pliny the Elder
Prosperity tries the fortunate: adversity the great.
- Pliny the Younger
Simple diet is best; for many dishes bring many diseases; and rich sauces are worse than even heaping several meats upon each other.
- Pliny
Programs dumping core are sort of like cats bringing dead mice to you. It’s unpleasant, but you know it really means they love you.
- Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin, via zephyr, Fri, 24 Sep 1993 12:07:01 -0400 (EDT)
If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
- Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin
So, is it my imagination, or are packets from CS to Andrew being written out in longhand by epileptics, taped to heavily sedated passenger pigeons, flown across campus, and re-entered by front panel toggles by a corpse?
- Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin
The time of departure will be delayed by the square of the number of people involved. Simply stated, if I wish to leave the city at 5 PM, I will most likely depart at 5:01. If I am to meet a friend, the time of departure becomes 5:04. If we were to meet another couple, we won’t be on out way before 5:16, and so on.
- Paul D. Plotnick
At Microsoft, it doesn’t matter which file you’re compiling, only which flags you #define.
- Colin Plumb
It is the natural order of things. Nothing can alter it. The strong take, the weak surrender.
- Sepp von Plum
The people who are rising in the world take over. The people who are sinking are taken over.
- Sepp von Plum
The weak have to be decent, while the strong can choose to be decent.
- Sepp von Plum
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds...he said: ’Do you not think it lamentable that with such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquerrd one?’
- Plutarch (c. 46-120), "On the Tranquility of the Mind"
A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me.
- Plutarch (c. 46-120)
A man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because if you indulge this passion on some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.
- Plutarch (c. 46-120)
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome.
- Plutarch (c. 46-120)
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.
- Plutarch (c. 46-120)
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch (c. 46-120)
Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become.
- Edgar Allan Poe
His eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.
- Edgar Allen Poe
Boys don’t make passes at female smartasses.
- Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
- Henri Poincaire
Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.
- Henri Poincaire
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means....[A] machine might be imagined where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theormems came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does.
- Henri Poincaire
It would be well, if some who have taken upon themselves the ministry of the Gospel, that they would first preach to themselves, then afterwards to others.
- Cardinal Pole
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.
- John G. Pollard
You may not be able to change the whole world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
- Katha Pollitt
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
- Channing Pollock
Before we work on artificial intelligence why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?
- Steve Polyak
COBOL makes instant programmers out of permanent idiots.
- Steve Polyak
Mathematical concepts and facts gain in vividness and clarity if they are well connected with the world around us and with general ideas, and if we obtain them by our own work through successive stages instead of in one lump.
- George Polya
A communist is a person who publicly airs his dirty Lenin.
- Jack Pomeroy
From the time we first begin to know, We live and learn, but not the wiser grow.
- Pomfret
The best may slip, and the most cautious fall; He’s more than mortal that ne’er err’d at all.
- Pomfret
Champagne is the only wine a woman can drink and still remain beautiful.
- Mme. de Pompadour
There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
- Georges Pompidou
’Tis education forms the common mind.
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
’Tis strange the miser should his cares employ
To gain the riches he can ne’er enjoy.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A little knowledge if a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicated the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A man should never be ashamed to admit he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
A wit’s a feather, and a chief’s a god;
An honest man is the noblest work of God.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
An atheist is but a mad ridiculous derider of piety;
but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion;
he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
At every trifle scorn to take offense,
That always shews great pride or little sense.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty;
it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate’er is best administer’d is best.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of principle.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present fate.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part;
there all the honesty lies.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
Man never is, but always to be blest.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
If an author write better than his contemporariee healing dew?
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Immodest words admit of no defence For want of decency is want of sense.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
In the nice bee what sense so subtly true Form pois’ness herbs extract the healing dew?
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Is not absence death to those who love?
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Know then this truth, enough for man to know
Virtue alone is happiness below.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Know then thyself; presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Lull’d in the ocuntless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link’d by mny a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads arise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Mingles with the friendly bowl,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Of all affliction taught a lover yet
’Tis sure the hardest science to forget.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil’d on mountains to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Order is heaven’s first law;
and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise;
but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Pour the full tide of eloquence along,
Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road
But looks through nature up to nature’s God.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Such labored nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze the unlearned, and make the learned smile.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Truth needs no flowers of speech.
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And sound casuists doubt like you and me?
- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
- Karl Popper (1957)
Committees are, by nature, timid. They are based on the premise of safety in numbers; content to survive inconspicuously, rather than take risks and move independantly ahead. Without independence, without the freedom for new ideas to be tried, to fail, and to ultimately succeed, the world will not move ahead, but live in fear of its own potential.
- Prof. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche
If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself
- Prof. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche
The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no law against wacking them around a little.
- Porterfield
I never yet heard man or woman much abused that I was not inclined to think the better of them, and to transfer the suspicion or dislike to the one who found pleasure in pointing out the defects of another.
- Jane Porter
It’s a man’s world, and you men can have it.
- Katherine Anne Porter
Today most physicians specialize. After getting his bill, I’ve decided my doctor’s speciality is banking.
- Mickey Porter
One murder makes a villain, millions a hero.
- Beilby Porteus (1731-1808), Death, A Poem
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months of work to do.
- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
I’m pretty sure that was written into the Constitution, "We the People have the Right to Gloat about kicking the Affef of thofe fiffy Britf" or something like that.
- Kevin Podsiadlik
Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his name was cited, and how often. The more "Malinowski" the more compelling the book. No "Malinowski," and he doubted the subject of the book was anthropology at all.
- Neil Postman
The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.
- Neil Postman
The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no law against wacking them around a little.
- Porterfield
Why dost thou court that baneful pest, ambition?
- Potter
USENET is a wonderful mechanism for making a fool of yourself in front of a very large audience.
- Lars Poulsen
I’ll probably never have children because I don’t believe in touching people for any reason.
- Paula Poundstone
You won’t learn much about capitalism at a university. How could you? Capitalism is a matter of risks and rewards, and a tenured professor doesn’t have much to do with either.
- Pournelle.
Never tell them what you wouldn’t do.
- Adam Clayton Powell
Let me blow that up a bit more for you.
- General Colin Powell, Discussing a picture of the intelligence compound in Iraq
Strike suddenly, decisively, and in sufficient force to resolve the matter. Do it quickly, and do it with minimum loss of life.
- General Colin Powell
Bad news does not improve with age.
- Jody Powell
Indifference is the only sure defence.
- Jody Powell
A hundred astronomers have left parts of their souls and their hopes in drawings showing the surface of Mars. A score of men have left their stamp in the major theories about life on the strange planet fourth from the sun. The names of ten thousand technicians and scientists rest now on a plaque standing a few feet above the soil of Mars, attached to a spacecraft sent there in 1976. Fifty writers have tried their pen out on Mars and things Martian; sixty movie directors have tried to grasp the magic and mystery... I would like to show you how to fall in love with a planet.
- Robert M. Powers
Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are enabled to inspire.
- Duchesse de Praslin
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn’t work, 2) didn’t do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser’s own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens"
The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full- sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar- playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
Let’s just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ’All gods are bastards.’
- Terry Pratchett, Rincewind the Wizzard in one of his books
A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered; I don’t know and I don’t care
- Richard Pratt, Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990
Computers double in speed every 18 months or so, so any "exponential time" problem can be solved in linear time by waiting the requisite number of months for the problem to become solvable in one month and then starting the computation.
- pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to recognize the ’no free lunch’ law causes the buffalo-hunter mentality syndrome -- the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because there alwayss has been plenty.
- Dr. Robert W. Prehoda
Many books today suggest that the mass of women lead lives of noisy desperation.
- Peter S. Prescott
Life’s a bitch, and life’s got lots of sisters.
- Ross Presser
Things are not as bad as they seem. They are worse.
- Bill Press
64-bit integers aren’t silly. For instance Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame, is now worth more than $4 billion. You can’t represent his net worth in 32 bits in dollars, let alone cents.
- Charlie Price
It’s easier to be a liberal a long way from home.
- Don Price
Scientists who dislike the restraints of highly organized research like to remark that a truly great research worker needs only three pieces of equipment: a pencil, a piece of paper, and a brain.... But they quote this maxim more often at academic banquets than at budget hearings.
- Don Price
Fix this sentence: He put the horse before the cart.
- Stephen Price
I can’t help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from ’em by calling ’em the masses and then you accuse ’em of not having any faces.
- J. B. Priestley
Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.
- J. B. Priestley
Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.
- J. B. Priestley
And virtue is her own reward.
- Prior
Examples I could cite you more: But be contented with these four; For when one’s proofs are aptly chosen Four are as valid as four dozen.
- Prior
Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-timed birth to grinning laughter and to frantic mirth.
- Prior
Timely advis’d, the coming evil shun!
- Prior
It worked once; it’s got to work every time.
- Josh Pritikin
We’re going to use prototypes?!? Oh. My. God!
- Josh Pritikin
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
- Herbert V. Prochnow
When better business decisions are made, economists won’t make them.
- Herbert V. Prochnow
What do they call a comedian who doesn’t get any laughs? A philosopher.
- Phil Proctor
Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms, one would not part.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
One of a hostess’s duties is to act as procuress.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed of her passing.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The only paradise is paradise lost.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
One cannot attain the limit of craftsmanship, And there is no craftsman who acquires his total mastery.
- Ptahhotep, c. 2350 B.C.
It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are.
- Publilius Syrus (c. 42 BC)
Practice is the best of all instructors.
- Publilius Syrus
If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we’d be too simple to understand it.
- Emerson Pugh
Newspapers should have no friends.
- Joseph Pulitzer
If there is anything education does not lack today, it is critics.
- Nathan M. Pusey
If the people in a democracy are allowed to do so, they will vote away the freedoms which are essential to that democracy.
- Snell Putney
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
- Putt’s Law
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