quotes: a

Actually, I think what would be most appropriate is if we were all to shut up now.
-Majdi Abbas
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-Edward Abbey
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule
themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
-Edward Abbey
Grown men do not need leaders.
-Edward Abbey
If the end does not justify the means - what can?
-Edward Abbey
Might does not make right but it sure makes what is.
-Edward Abbey
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
-Edward Abbey
The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations.
-Edward Abbey
What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I brought it up.
-Edward Abbey
Some people wish for peace for our children and their children. This is not enough. We
must insist on peace for ourselves.
-King Abdullah of Jordan
In fact, the ubiquity of the handheld reflects two other key trends among the Baby
Boomers: No one has a secretary, and no one can remember a damn thing.
-Elliott Abrams
Hey,if you've got a whole dump truck full of skulls...how are you going to keep track?
-Jeremy Abramsom
I'm of the opinion that everyone should be beaten at least once a year.
-Jeremy Abramsom
...and I was just trying to live my bloody life - you know, get from A to B, and do a little
shopping - only to find that in fact life is controlled poorly by bits of *bloody*, *bloody*
buggery bits of paper. I mean, why can't life just be made a little bit easier for everybody,
you know, I mean why do we play bloody taxes? I know, you know, to buy railings to put
outside bloody shops so stupid people can't run into the bloody road, but you know, we're
not all stupid. We don't all need nursemaiding. I mean, why not have a stupidity tax, just
tax the stupid people!
-Absolutely Fabulous
Dick Cheney's job in the White House will be to oversee the military, foreign affairs, the
federal budget, federal agencies, judicial appointments, executive branch hiring and
firing, and West Wing office space distribution. Bush can play 36 holes.
-Joel Achenbach
I find myself using the word "bandwidth" now, and feel the mounting urge to say
"megabit" and "gigabit" and "terabit" as though these are normal words like "tree" and
"rock" and "bunny." I've learned the meaning of the word "photonics," and now, like
many techies, believe the most important fundamental particle in the communications
industry of the future will be the photon, not the electron. You know your world has
changed, has become more innately technological, when a distinction like that strikes you
as interesting.
-Joen Achenbach
If novelty was the essential ingredient of modern art, then repetition is the hallmark of
postmodern craft.
-Joel Achenbach
The young don't feel any great need to wait for the Walk sign before they cross the street.
They feel invulnerable. Over time, you better appreciate the consequences of each action.
You see people get burned, you see friends fall apart, you go to a few heartbreaking
funerals. You begin to realize that survival requires cunning, and as a hedge, as part of a
long-term strategy for improving your odds, you wait on the corner until you get the
signal to walk.
-Joel Achenbach
Yes, the race is close. But it should be. That's not a sign of unfinished business. That's a
sign of a politically mature system. Our two major parties are enormous, amoebic
entities, shifting and morphing over time, sliding left and right, subsuming various
factions of voters. A perfect system will result in close elections. The only thing that
could skew the system is if one party has a truly wonderful, enchanting, superior
candidate. This year we don't have that problem.
-Joel Achenbach
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost
always bad men.
-Lord Acton
Hey! Are you people moshing? This is techno. TECH-NO. You don't mosh to techno,
you mosh to hardcore. HARD-CORE.
-DJ Mohawk Adam
Here we have a game that combines the charm of a Pentagon briefing with the excitement
of double- entry bookkeeping.
-Cecil Adams on Dungeons & Dragons
In some ways we know more about what happened in the universe's first tenth of a
second than we do about what goes on in the interval between "Your place or mine?" and
deciding who sleeps on the wet spot.
-Cecil Adams
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it
was and whether they were enjoying it.
-Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and
been widely regarded as a bad move.
-Douglas Adams
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is
going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and
just keep yourself occupied.
-Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost
unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand,
five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it
is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of
achievement you get from getting them to work at all." In other words, - and this is the
rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is
founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial
design flaws.
-Douglas Adams
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all
customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who,
by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers what the Universe is for and why
it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-Douglas Adams
There was a point to this narrative, but it has presently escaped the chronicler's mind.
-Douglas Adams
There's nothing in life so difficult that a Microsoft manual can't make it completely
incomprehensible.
-Douglas Adams
We may not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end.
-Douglas Adams
Why is there pain and misery in the world?... Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet?
Why didn't Microsoft even put in a word count? These things are unknowable.
-Douglas Adams
Nothing in education is so atonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the
form of inert facts
-Henry Adams
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy.
-John Adams
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of
carbon compounds that crawl.
-Mike Adams
As a fan, I'm distraught, but as a cartoonist looking at new vacant spaces in 2,400
newspapers, well, behind me, my cats are dancing a conga line.
-Scott Adams on the ending of Calvin & Hobbes
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's
done.
-Scott Adams
Most of the other suggestions involved doing things that were impractical, obscene or
illegal. I tried them all personally, and although I must say I enjoyed several of them they
didn't meet all of the criteria for selection.
-Scott Adams
My business cards have said "engineer" for several years, but that's mostly to impress
women.
-Scott Adams
Technology will definitely solve all our problems, but in the process it will create brand-
new ones. But that's OK because the most you can expect from life is to get to solve
better and better problems.
-Scott Adams
There are, in general, two ways to predict the future. You can, for example, use
horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, a crystal ball, and so forth. Collectively, these are
known as the "nutty methods." Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated
computer models, more commonly referred to as "a complete waste of time." While all
these approaches have their advantages, I find it's a lot easier and more economical to
simply make stuff up.
-Scott Adams
This web project is the most self-indulgent, egotistical thing I have ever done in my life.
But the day is young. I can top it.
-Scott Adams
Venture capitalist. No doubt about it. Not only does it sound great at parties, but you're
expected to fail 90 percent of the time--and that's OK. Some of my best friends are
venture capitalists, but let's face it, a hamster with Alzheimer's could make those kind of
numbers. It's great work if you can get it.
-Scott Adams
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise,
are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.
-Joseph Addison
I can feel my hearing impairing.
-David Adler
Is it red or white wine with Tokyo?
-David Adler as Godzilla
ALL television is children's television.
-Richard Adler
Ignorance of your profession is best concealed by solemnity and silence, which pass for
profound knowledge upon the generality of mankind.
-"Advice to Officers of the British Army", 1783
This is an air fragrance product. It does not have supernatural powers.
-from an aerosol can at Woolworth's
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-Aesop
It's a place used the world over where people can come to bitch about movies and share
pornography together.
-Ben Affleck as Holden McNeil, describing the Internet, in Kevin Smith's _Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back_
You see, that's the difference between us. I assume the best about people, while you
assume the worst. So I get hurt, but you get nothing.
-Sondra Ahlen
Given a choice, the American people would prefer the policeman's truncheon to the
anarchist's bomb.
-Spiro Agnew
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to
ram them down people's throats.
-Howard Aiken
Worthless.
-Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS (Astronomer Royal of
Great Britain), estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of
the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842
A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled.
Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.
-Ryunosuke Akutagawa
I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy
one for a few dollars.
-Fred Allen
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
-Henry Allen
Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without
it any more than we can without potatoes.
-Louisa May Alcott
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality
through not dying.
-Woody Allen
I'm due back on the planet Earth now.
-Woody Allen
If only god would give me a sign... like making a large deposit in my name to a swiss
bank account.
-Woody Allen
If you're not failing now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe.
-Woody Allen
Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good
questions.
-Woody Allen
More puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of
millions. The reason they can never answer the question, 'How could it possibly happen?'
is that it is the wrong question. Given what people are, the real question is, 'Why doesn't
it happen more often?' But of course it does, just in smaller ways.
-Woody Allen
Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best.
-Woody Allen
The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is
going to make fun of you.
-Woody Allen
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple of more feet, just
to be sure.
-Eric Allman
There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and
there's being off the network.
-Guy Almes
117 documents match your query. Search Amazon.com for top-selling titles about +dwarf
+"pubic hair".
-AltaVista
I was hoping your server was a huge, custom, Area 51-type of thing, Frankensteinian, a
mammoth gigaswitch, but held together with duct tape and prayer. You disappoint me.
-Matt Alt
General flames go to alt.flame. Flaming the entire AOL community goes to alt.aol-sucks.
-From the alt.sex.stories FAQ
Well, he's not psycho or addicted to anything, he's got a job, and he's doing the school
thing; this is a step up for me.
-Bekka Altes
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-Noelie Altito
The first Internet Cult Mass Murder.... I've got your information highway RIGHT HERE
buddy!
-Marcus Alzona
The number one problem in our country is apathy ... But who cares!
-Darrel Anderson
"Machiavelli's The Little Prince" - Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic children's tale as
presented by Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful
and intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.
-Erik Anderson
Remember, the Christmas Spirit is not what you drink.
-Ian Anderson
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't
believe this to be a coincidence.
-Jeremy Anderson
He's not working... he's suppressing an uncontrollable user!
-Jim Anderson
My plan for improving the quality of presentations used to be two-fold: DESTROY
EVERY COPY OF POWERPOINT (and assorted functional clones) in existence, and
GIVE OFFENDERS REMEDIAL "HOW TO TALK" CLASSES, emphasizing the
content-based logical mark-up portions of HTML as a mechanism for making slides.
(The hardcore hopeless cases would be forced to learn TeX.) Now, however, I think there
needs to be a third step: BIG BIRD MUST DIE.
-John S. Jacobs Anderson
Increasingly, we go to a company and we find not a company but a product. Increasingly,
that product is not so much a product but features of a product, and increasingly, those
features are not features but an idea.
-Marc Andreesen
It all comes down to one thing: whether we are building a burger or a company. If we are
building a burger, we take every customer that comes along and cash the checks as
quickly as we can, but if we're building a company, we say no to any company that
distracts us from the long-term mission. ... A burger is meant to be flipped, whereas a
company is meant to be here for the long term. It's the central issue in this company and it
affects every decision we make. It affects who we hire, how we spend our money, how
we incentivize our people, and whether we accept a customer that doesn't necessarily fit
into our business model. We aren't in the burger business.
-Marc Andreessen
Java Navigator will have a lot of good attributes: It's slower. It will crash more and have
fewer features. So you can do fewer things. It will simplify your life.
-Marc Andreesen, as quoted in BrowserWatch
I think most folks that are hooked up are like me, and suspect they hit the love lottery, but
they haven't finished scratching off the ticket yet.
-Mark Andy
God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be
destroyed, except by itself.
-Norman Angell
At least in kindergarten when the regular teacher was out the substitute would let us
color, but this is ridiculous. How do I fill an entire 6 hour day with no work to do. I
wonder if this was in the investor prospectus under "forward looking statements?"
-Anonymoose, f---edcompany.com Happy Fun Slander Corner
Que es el problema ahora? <--- sample of a Spanish version of SQL
-anoiksi, #perl, EFNet
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know that he is.
-Jean Anouilh, "The Lark"
Before the tragedy of September 11th the only thing scary about Anthrax was our bad
hair in the 80's and the "Fistful Of Metal" album cover.
-Anthrax press release
It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed complicated. The goal of
a scientist is to find an interesting problem, and live off it for a while. The goal of an
engineer is to evade interesting problems.
-Vadim Antonov
Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot.
-H. Peter Anvin
I knew the gratuitous bra scene had to be CGI. The curve of Julia Roberts' breasts was
too reminiscent of the Sterns-Rahaja pertness algorithm.
-Dan Appelquist
Kevin, your wit is tepid and lacking in spirit. You are as a small flower which, when
carried upon the wind's harrowing passages, is thrown hither and thither, never reaching
safe ground to spread its roots. And therefore, just as the flower, your feeble witicisms
die from lack of nitrogen.
-Dan Appelquist
My friend Stew says I don't quallify for Gen X because I've never done any
telemarketing.
-Dan Appelquist
Okay everybody, let's all play the new game show, 'gay or canadian?'
-Hugh Apple
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification
Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure idealogy,
where each worker may be bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing
truths. Our unification of thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on
earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk
themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail.
-Apple 1984 Commercial
A typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program.
-Apple MPW C compiler error message
...And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch
statement.'
-Apple MPW C compiler error message
We already did this function.
-Apple MPW C compiler error message
There is a life-size picture of a dogcow conveniently located in the Finder. Look under
"Page Setup..." Now look under "Options." Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like
any talented cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment.
-from Apple Tech Note #31
Nothing is intrinsically good or evil, but its manner of usage may make it so.
-St. Thomas Aquinas
Live together like brothers and do business like strangers.
-Arab Proverb
Trust in God, but tie your camel.
-Arab proverb
Crotch Masculine Deodorant Spray. When a man wants to feel good, he reaches for his
Crotch.
-Steve Archer
goddamnit! my duck is broken....this sucks
-Steve Archer
marilyn manson action figures, now with controllable satanism.
-Steve Archer
welcome to shadowscene, the land of the dark and stupid. so dark, even our ideas appear
as black lights... or something like that. and the bounds of our stupidity is only matched
by the length of that goddamn ... thread.
-Steve Archer
you know I made several points that were way better and more intelligent then that. but
they didn't include them because the media sucks.
-Steve Archer
Don't you dare think that this girl lets you off the hook, star star star starlette star star star.
This isn't like most mailing lists, where we ritually torture the new list member until
someone else shows up. This is psychoburbia, where, if you're dumb, we'll just beat you
mercilessly with lead pipes until the next idiot dares pull their head out of the sand, and
then we'll beat them, too.
-Mark Argent
Like most other "sexy" articles of women's clothing, it puts men in "the mood" and the
woman wearing it in the mood to chuck it in the trash and sit in a bathtub with a box of
Hershey's Kisses until her toes look like prunes.
-Mark Argent
Please do not speak. It will only save you embarassment in the future.
-Mark Argent
we in the psychiatric community have a special term for people like John ... "stark staring
bonkers"
-Mark Argent
Welcome to the Babbage's of Infinite Delights. I am the proprietor of this establishment.
My name is Lo Pan. We have wonders from all four corners of the globe. Everything you
seek is here. But be warned...that which you desire most, comes with a most horrible
price... You seek a Legend of Zelda cartridge. We do indeed carry such an item... but it
carries a terrrrible curse....
-Mark Argent
You could get an iMac, but generally speaking, iMacs are something you win, not
something you buy.
-Mark Argent
The wise learn many things from their enemies.
-Aristophanes
There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness.
-Aristotle
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-Aristotle
Sleep is actually a good substitute for coffee
-Bill Arms
Drugs are for the weak. Yoohoo is for the hardcore.
-Hayley Asay
Good ... Bad ... I'm the guy with the GUN!
-Ash, "Army of Darkness"
It's a trick...get an axe.
-Ash, "Army of Darkness"
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
-Issac Asimov
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily
exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the
scientific process.
-Isaac Asimov
I don't like the way [Independance Day] ended. The humans shouldn't have won. That
movie should have ended with a smoldering planet and the aliens laughing and drinking
beer and using our resources.
-Jason Asser
The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
-Lady Astor
It's the crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she's there, but you can't say anything
about it.
-AT&T official on the company's pay-per-view pornography business
Instant Hangover: just remove water.
-Laura Atkins
Never believe anything until it's officially denied.
-Margaret Atwood
Perhaps some future [D&D] variation may even take a cue from recursive movies like
"Being John Malkovich" and the "Scream" series. In it, you'd play a game-company vice
president with the Bard-like name of Dancey. To win, you'd need to regain the trust of
embittered former loyalists and guide them through the bizarre Astral Plane known as the
Internet -- where a cruel kingdom called Microsoft battles a guild of gnome-like tinkerers
and their nebbishy leader, a sorcerer from faraway Finland, the one with an
unpronounceable name and a magic penguin.
-Wagner James Au

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish
the were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been
granted.
-W. H. Auden
Only the free have disposition to be truthful. Only the truthful have the interest to be just.
Only the just possess the willpower to be free.
-W. H. Auden
The optimum committee has no members.
-Norman Augustine
Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts
of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and
distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is
thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about
such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that
we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the
Christian and laugh to scorn.
-St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim"
You cannot have too large a party.
-Jane Austen
... problems continue in the South African black townships. Four people were killed in
violent clashes yesterday. A black spokesman said - this situation is a tragedy for our
people; we get no help from the government; blacks are dying and all the whites can do is
talk about cricket. [very brief pause] last night at the Sydney Cricket Ground, the South
African cricket team defeated Australia in the day-night match .....
-A(ustralian)BC-FM news
All photography is accurate - none of it is truth.
-Richard Avedon
It's just so strange to me that anyone would ever think that a work of art shouldn't be
disturbing, or shouldn't be invasive. I mean, that's the property of a work of art, that's the
arena of a work of art - it's to disturb, it's to make you think, it's to make you feel. If my
work didn't disturb people from time to time, it would be a failure in my eyes - it's meant
to disturb, in a positive way.
-Richard Avedon
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that
we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
-Bernard Avishai