Fun_People Archive
5 Jan
Useless Quotes Vol III (F-I)

Date: Thu,  5 Jan 95 14:14:27 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Useless Quotes Vol III (F-I)

[Did you think I had forgotten this thread?  No such luck... -psl]

Forwarded-by: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there
is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
		-- J. K. Galbraith's Law of Human Nature

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
		-- John Diefenbaker

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
		-- H. H. Williams

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
		-- Elbert Hubbard

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
	(1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
	(2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
	(3) The energy required to change either one of these states
	    will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
	    much as to make the task totally impossible.

Ginsberg's Theorem:
	(1) You can't win.
	(2) You can't break even.
	(3) You can't even quit the game.

Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
		-- Napolean

Go on writing plays, my boy.  One of these days a London producer will go
into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this
morning?" and when she says "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to
start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
		-- G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home

God gave us two ears and one mouth. That ought to tell us something.

Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.

Goldenstern's Rules:
	(1) Always hire a rich attorney
	(2) Never buy from a rich salesman.

Governments tell lies, and newspapers tell lies, but in a democracy they
are different lies.

... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.

Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
  [That probably should be: "... dumb at, asshole."  -psl]

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

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

Heavy, adj.:
	Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
perfectly delightful.
		-- Sydney Smith

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

"Hello," he lied.
		-- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent

Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.

Here be Dragons!
		-- Ancient Map 
		(and the introduction to the chapter on operator
		 overloading in C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup)

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

He was a modest, good-humored boy.  It was Oxford that made him insufferable.

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

He who laughs, lasts.

His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
money, he went to Southern California.

History is curious stuff
	You'd think by now we had enough
Yet the fact remains I fear
	They make more of it every year.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
		-- F. M. Hubbard

Honk if you love peace and quiet.

Horngren's Observation:
	Among economists, the real world is often a special case.

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

HR 3128.  Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986.  Martin, R-Ill.,
motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment
making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.  The Senate
amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment
to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill.  The original
Senate amendment was the conference agreement on the bill.  Agreed to.
		-- Albuquerque Journal

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, 
responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and 
immature.
		-- Tom Robbins

Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
		-- William Gilbert

Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
	The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
	to ..... to ........ uh ..............

I am an atheist, thank God!

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of
pre-Adamite ancestral descent.  You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule.  Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable.  I can't help it.  I was born sneering.
		-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan

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

I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.
		-- English Professor

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
		-- English Professor, Ohio University

I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.

I belong to no organized party.  I am a Democrat.
		-- Will Rogers

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
		-- Fred Allen

I could dance till the cows come home.  On second thought, I'd rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
		-- Groucho Marx

I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions.  
The curtain was up.

I do hate sums.  There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science.  There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds
entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail
to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to
perceive.  For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again
from the top down, the result is always different.
		-- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)

I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
		-- Isaac Asimov

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
		-- Galileo Galilei

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating
		-- Boss Tweed

I don't know anything about music.  In my line you don't have to.
		-- Elvis Presley

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
		-- Victor Hugo

I doubt, therefore I might be.

I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship.  I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
		-- George Bernard Shaw

I get up each morning, gather my wits.
	Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
	So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
		-- Pete Seeger

I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
it's going to be up all night.
		-- Steven Wright

I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
which would be called `A Live Politician Gets Eaten by a Shark'.

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
and they never believe me.
		-- Camillo Di Cavour

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter.
		-- Blaise Pascal

I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.
		-- Oscar Wilde

I have to convince you, or at least snow you...
		-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435

I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
		-- Bill Hoest

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it.
		-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I only know that I do not know, but that is something after all.
		-- ejb

I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as
Martina Navratilova who can run like deer and bench-press Chevrolet
trucks.  But to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to
go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports
that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it.
		-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"

I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
		-- Graffito in Los Angeles

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six.  Mother took me to
see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
		-- Shirley Temple

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
		-- Roy Santoro

If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
		-- Paul White

If a child annoys you, quiet him by brushing his hair.  If this doesn't
work, use the other side of the brush on the other end of the child.

If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z.  X is work.  Y
is play.  Z is keep your mouth shut.
		-- Albert Einstein

If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is
certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.
		-- Joseph C. Goulden

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
		-- Paul Beatty

If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.

If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?

If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals?

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
		-- Eugene P. Gallagher

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
		-- Isaac Newton
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
		-- Brian K. Reid

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.  They
would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
		-- Thomas Carlyle

If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
		-- Tom Robbins

If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.

If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been away on
vacation.

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
		-- Norm Schryer

If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread,
they can sure make something out of you.
		-- Muhammad Ali

If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
		-- Harry S Truman

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about
it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
		-- Carlyle

If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.

If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
		-- Clarence Day

If you don't remember, you had a good time

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
		-- Graham Summer

If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
people die past the age of a hundred.
		-- George Burns

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
		-- Mark Twain

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.  But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.

If your parents didn't have sex, the odds are that you won't either.
		-- Kazayasu Makabe

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
		-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
		-- Earl Wilson

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
		-- Arthur Kasspe

If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
even if they don't know what it means.
		-- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution.  It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
statecraft.  Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
titles beginning with the word "National".
		-- George Will

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.

Ignorance is never out of style.  It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage
today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
		-- Franklin K. Dane

I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
listen to it!
		-- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire

Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
		-- Jules de Gaultier

I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
		-- Spider Robinson

i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
		-- e. e. cummings

I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.

I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States.  The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
		-- Arthur Godfrey

I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives

In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  
Only we can't control when the five year period will begin.

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

In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries.  Anthropologists call
this a form of primitive self-expression.  In America we call it golf.

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
		-- Adlai Stevenson

In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
		-- The Peter Principle

In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
neighbor.

In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.

In graduate school, no one can hear you scream.

In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
the sidewalks when a concert is on.

In Idaho, state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
will only make it mushy.
		-- Mark Twain

In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
pocket.

In Marshalltown, Iowa, horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants.

In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.

In NYC, it's easier to get a girlfriend than it is to get an apartment.

In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
		-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of
concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view."

In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
is over six feet in length.

In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
moving automobile.

In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.  Therefore ... in the Old
Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three
hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is
something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesome returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
		-- Mark Twain 

In this world, truth can wait; he's used to it.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
		-- Jefferson

Individualists unite!

Ingrate, n.:
	A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
	indigestion.

Innovation is hard to schedule.
		-- Dan Fylstra

Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
		-- Kelvin Throop III

© 1995 Peter Langston