“Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic.”

        — Unknown

“Americans will always reach for their lawyers first.”

        — Neil Brennan, Ignite Melbourne 2010

“Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it necessary? Is it true? Does it improve upon the silence?”

        — Shirdi Sai Baba

“One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.”

        — Josh Billings

“C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.”

        — Scott McKay

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.”

        — James Branch Cabell

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”

        — Milton Berle

“Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

“I think of optimism as a brave choice rather than an ignorant position.”

        — Unknown

“This crash always occured with the Skype toolbar, speaking of malware.”

        — Firefox Developer, Linux.conf.au 2012

“What one sees depends on how one sees.”

        — Søren Kierkegaard

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

        — Winston Churchill

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”

        — Woodrow Wilson

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

        — Dwight Eisenhower

“Don’t worry that children never listen to you, worry that they are always watching you.”

        — Robert Fulghum

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.”

        — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?”

        — Pablo Casals

“No matter what it is I’m doing, there’s always about an 85% chance I’m supposed to be doing something else.”

        — Caprice Crane (@CapricecCrane)

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

        — Aristotle

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”

        — William Shakespeare

“The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

        — W. Somerset Maugham

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

        — Michelangelo Buonarroti

“No matter what amazing things you accomplish or how fantastic you are, a cat will always think it is better than you.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“Corporate policy is the great leveller, allows the gibbering idiot not to think and drives the intelligent to gibbering idiocy.”

        — Adam Donnison

“Ironically, making a statement with words is the least effective method.”

        — Grey Livingston

“Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.”

        — Douglas Adams

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.”

        — Mencius

“Ordinary people need to lead and not sit there and think that governments are going to spoon feed them.”

        — Ian Kiernan

“If you lend someone twenty dollars, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.”

        — Unknown

“To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.”

        — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Programming is 10% science, 20% ingenuity, and 70% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.”

        — Unknown

“Everybody always talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.”

        — Mark Twain

“When C++ is your hammer, everything starts to look like your thumb.”

        — Amazon interview candidate

“We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.”

        — Unknown

“Whatever your advice, make it brief.”

        — Horace

“All the world’s a stage! And here I am in the blooper reel!”

        — Ziggy by Tom Wilson

/* Sometimes I believe the compiler ignores all my comments. */

        — Unknown Programmer

“If cats looked like frogs we’d realise what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”

        — Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment.”

        — Ira Gassen

“I like the word ‘indolence’. It makes my laziness seem classy.”

        — Bern Williams

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”

        — Henry Ford

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”

        — John Greenleaf Whittier

“Organisations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.”

        — David Hanna, Designing Organizations for High Performance

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

        — Frank A. Clark

“He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I’m kinda glad he hit you.”

        — “The Magicians” by Lev Grossman

“The heart is the first feature of working minds.”

        — Frank Lloyd Wright

“Our marriage was built on mutual trust and a lot of acting ability.”

        — Unknown

“Dogs with thumbs would make you coffee, cats with thumbs would steal your car.”

        — Richard Stevens (@rstevens)

“Happiness is a direction, not a place.”

        — Sydney J. Harris

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

        — Carl Bard

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”

        — Jim Barksdale (former Netscape CEO)

“It’s only impossible if you stop to think about it!”

        — The Pirates! Band of Misfits

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

        — Grey’s law

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career.”

        — George Bernard Shaw

“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.”

        — Billy Wilder

“It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

        — Hofstadter’s Law

“Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning.”

        — Unknown

“Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.”

        — Aesop

“The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it’s more like a tired feeling.”

        — Paula Poundstone

“You’re making this too complicated when it’s really quite simple. All you have to do is make the software completely configurable so it can do whatever I need it to.”

        — Unknown, from Clients From Hell

“There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”

        — Ursula K. Le Guin

“There’s much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.”

        — Diana Trilling

“I guess cows aren’t into the four food groups, especially when they are two of them.”

        — Anthony Clark

“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”

        — Gilbert K. Chesterton

“There are two rules for success: 1. Never tell everything you know.”

        — Roger H. Lincoln

“Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity.”

        — Clay Shirky

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

        — Michel de Montaigne

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

        — Albert Einstein

“There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.”

        — Po Bronson

“Don’t wait for people to be friendly, show them how.”

        — Unknown

“As long as a word remains unspoken, you are its master once you utter it, you are its slave.”

        — Solomon Ibn Gabirol

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

        — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”

        — Richard J. Needham

“A nice thing about being single is when you’re setting the silverware it doesn’t matter which side you put the remote on.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“Middle names exist so kids have a clear indication when they are in big trouble.”

        — Michael Lopp (@rands)

“Reality shows are great because they let you watch dysfunctional people without an annoying mirror.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“He who has begun is half done.”

        — Horace

“When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is no diplomat.”

        — Otto von Bismarck

“Programming is an art form that fights back.”

“He flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”

        — Stephen Leacock

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.”

        — James Branch Cabell

“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”

        — Sam Keen

My personal pet peeve is how many people think the hard part is in the “big and hard problems” or in some fluffy but important-sounding thing like “innovation”. In fact, all the real work is in getting the details right. It’s that “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” thing. People seem to think that inspiration is the much bigger and important part of the two, but I’ve come to believe that while it’s important to have inspiration, where people actually stumble is when they can’t execute on that inspiration. Inspiration isn’t that rare in the end, but people who have it and then actually follow through… that’s rare.

        — Linus Torvalds

“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

        — John Locke

Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it “the first law of personal growth.”

        — Peter McWilliams

“With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea.”

        — R. Callon, RFC1925: The Twelve Networking Truths

“They say a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Why the truth is pantsless, no one mentions.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”

        — Josephine Hart, Damage

“The biggest mistake men make is thinking they have to even remotely understand what it is that they’re apologising for.”

        — Caprice Crane (@CapricecCrane)

“Men are taught to apologise for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”

        — Lois Wyse

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”

        — Albert Einstein

“To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”

        — Charles de Montesquieu

P.S. Q4TD is now on Mastodon! https://mastodon.social/@q4td

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.”

        — William James

“Change is inevitable. Unless you need it to feed the parking meter. Then it’s nowhere to be found.”

        — Caprice Crane

“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilisation.”

        — Sigmund Freud

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

        — Judy Garland

“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place.”

        — Joseph Goebbels

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

        — Unknown

“Confusion is a renewable resource.”

        — Kent Beck (@KentBeck)

“In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.”

        — John Churton Collins

“The problem with quick and dirty, is that the dirty remains long after the quick has been forgotten.”

        — Steve C McConnell

“When you’re in that voting booth with just your conscience and a pen, take the pen because that’s all you’ll ever get out of them.”

“A library is thought in cold storage.”

        — Herbert Samuel

“Often we don’t really need advice or guidance from each other. Sometimes we just need a friend to deposit courage into our soul.”

        — Mike Foster

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

        — George Bernard Shaw

“The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.”

        — Mark Russell

“Choose being kind over being right, and you’ll be right every time.”

        — Richard Carlson

“Always back the horse named self-interest, son. It’ll be the only one trying.”

        — Jack Lang

“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.”

        — Robert Anthony

“In a perfect world, you and I probably wouldn’t exists, so let’s not hope for one.”

        — Ze Frank, The Show, 18 Apr 2006

“If everybody thought before they spoke, the silence would be deafening.”

        — George Barzan

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”

        — Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

“People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.”

        — Unknown

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”

        — Mignon McLaughlin

“A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.”

        — Leo Rosten

“It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion.”

        — William Ralph Inge

“It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say ‘I don’t know’.”

        — W. Somerset Maugham

“Our marriage was built on mutual trust and a lot of acting ability.”

        — Unknown

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

        — Satchel Paige

“Programming close to the hardware is bare metal. Programming close to javascript is bare stupid.”

        — Eamon Brosnan

“The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

        — Alex Carey

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

        — George S. Patton

“Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise.”

“In the olden days, if you wanted to watch an American TV show as soon as it came out, you had to get an expensive flight to America every week. But now, thanks to the internet, it’s much easier to find cheaper flights to America.”

        — Tim Berners-Lee

“I mean seriously, aren’t there days when you’d rather open an artery than check your email?”

        — J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski)

“Organisations are perfectly designed to get the results they get.”

        — David Hanna, Designing Organizations for High Performance

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”

        — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Only drug dealers and software companies call their customers ‘users’”

        — Edward Tufte

“My writing process: 50 percent pacing, 20 percent snacks, 18 percent furious weeping, 12 percent actual writing.”

        — Brendan I. Koerner (@brendankoerner)

“Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.”

        — Samuel Butler

“There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.”

        — Leon Bambrick (@secretGeek)

“Dear coffee: we had a deal. I’d put you in my body, you would give me super powers. WTF happened?”

        — Cory Doctorow (@doctorow)

“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

        — Sir Winston Churchill

“I was married by a judge – I should have asked for a jury.”

        — Groucho Marx

“Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

        — Leo Buscaglia

“The illiterate of the 21st Century won’t be those can’t read and write, but those who can’t learn, unlearn and re-learn.”

        — Alvin Tofler

“People are people through other people.”

        — African Proverb

“Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.”

        — Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.”

        — Unknown

“Inside every well-written large program is a well-written small program.”

        — C. A. R. Hoare

“His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.”

        — William McAdoo

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.”

        — Lillian Hellman

“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”

        — Confucius

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

        — Robert Louis Stevenson

“Books are uniquely portable magic.”

        — Stephen King

“For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.”

        — Clifton Fadiman

“At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.”

        — Marshall Lumsden

“He was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

        — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“As user friendly as a cornered rat.”

        — Seen in a software review

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”

        — Dwight Eisenhower

“Does anybody remember Microsoft? They use to be a big company.”

        — Mitch Wagner, This Week in Google

“Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.”

        — Edna Woolman Chase

“Arrogance and rudeness are training wheels on the bicycle of life – for weak people who cannot keep their balance without them.”

        — Laura Teresa Marquez

“Adulthood is like the vet, and we’re all the dogs that were excited for the car ride until we realized where we’re going.”

        — Stephanie McMaster (@Smethanie)

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

        — Millard Fuller

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

        — Carrie Fisher

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”

        — John Barrymore

“Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbour is a spiritual one.”

        — Nikolai Bardlyaev

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

        — Ellen Parr

“Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.”

        — Albert Einstein

“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.”

        — George Eliot

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

        — Hanlon’s Razor

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.”

        — Unknown

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

        — T. S. Eliot

“Rewriting is an opportunity to find new ways of coding old bugs, as well as exciting new bugs.”

        — Unknown

“Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.”

        — Dandemis

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

        — Oscar Wilde

“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”

        — Carl Sagan

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”

        — Japanese Proverb

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a witty person, but a pebble in the hands of a fool.”

        — Unknown

“It is good for us to keep some account of our prayers, that we may not unsay them in our practice.”

        — Matthew Henry

“Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes.”

        — Washington Irving

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

        — Aesop

“It’s not whether you win or lose – but whether I win or lose.”

        — Sandy Lyle

“Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.”

        — Douglas Adams

“Change is inevitable. Unless you need it to feed the parking meter. Then it’s nowhere to be found.”

        — Caprice Crane

“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.”

        — Dennis M. Ritchie

“No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.”

        — Dave Barry

“One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.”

        — G. M. Weilacher

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”

        — Milton Berle

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

        — Hilary Cooper

“I am in favour of preserving the French habit of kissing ladies’ hands - after all, one must start somewhere.”

        — Sacha Guitry

“The latest new features in C++ are designed to fix the previously new features in C++”

        — David Jameson

“There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.”

        — Josh Billings

“Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

        — Garth Brooks

“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.”

        — Paul Ehrlich

“The shortest answer is doing.”

        — George Herbert

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

        — Unknown

“Don’t judge those who try and fail, judge those who fail to try.”

        — Unknown

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.”

        — Mark Twain

“Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.”

        — Samuel Butler

“I don’t understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.”

        — Matt Bailey (@mattb811)

Love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.

        — Michael Leunig

“When it comes to making a big change in your life, you have to want it more than you fear it.”

        — Unknown

“There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.”

        — Po Bronson

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”

        — Henri Louis Bergson

“Socialising on the internet is to socialising, what reality TV is to reality.”

        — Aaron Sorkin

“Never let your past dictate who you are, but let it be a part of who you’ll become.”

        — Nick Portokalos

“No matter how big and bad you are, when a two year old hands you a toy phone, you answer it.”

        — Unknown

“Labour disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labour.”

        — Ulysses S. Grant

“If you lend someone twenty dollars, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.”

        — Unknown

“There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life – reciprocity.”

        — Confucius

“Everybody always talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it.”

        — Mark Twain

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.”

        — Tom Waits

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

        — George S. Patton

“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

        — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.”

        — Mencius

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

        — Mark Twain

“A generous man forgets what he gives and remembers what he receives.”

        — Proverb

“I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.”

        — Ruth St. Denis

“Cleaning code does NOT take time. NOT cleaning code does take time.”

        — Uncle Bob Martin (@unclebobmartin)

“If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.”

        — Louis D. Brandeis

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.”

        — Garrison Keillor

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”

        — Jorge Luis Borges

“You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.”

        — Ziggy by Tom Wilson

“Everyone is famous for 15 Gigabytes.”

        — Cory Doctorow

“Fortunately excitement is one of the contagious things children carry.”

        — Tatu Saloranta (@cowtowncoder)

“To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.”

        — Reba McEntire

“What one sees depends on how one sees.”

        — Søren Kierkegaard

“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.”

        — Roger Miller

“With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea.”

        — R. Callon, RFC1925: The Twelve Networking Truths

“No man is a failure who is enjoying life.”

        — William Feather

“Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.”

        — Ray Bradbury

“Always be nice to people on the way up; because you’ll meet the same people on the way down.”

        — Wilson Mizner

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

        — Millard Fuller

“Twitter spoils us. If only we could limit people in real life to 140 characters or less.”

        — Caprice Crane (@capricecrane)

“Find love when you have time, and find time when you already found the one to love.”

        — Terry Pratchett

“UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things.”

        — Doug Gwyn

“Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise.”

“Dear coffee: we had a deal. I’d put you in my body, you would give me super powers. WTF happened?”

        — Cory Doctorow (@doctorow)

“Books are the closest thing to real magic I could ever find. How else could sheets of paper transport me to another world?”

        — Brian Rathbone (@BrianRathbone)

“A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.”

        — Mistinguett

“Inside every well-written large program is a well-written small program.”

        — C. A. R. Hoare

“Indifference is an excellent substitute for patience.”

        — Mason Cooley

“For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.”

        — Clifton Fadiman

“Indifference is an excellent substitute for patience.”

        — Mason Cooley

“There are too many people, and too few human beings.”

        — Robert Zend

“When life shuts a door, open it again. It’s a door. That’s how they work.”

        — Unknown

“As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.”

        — Joan Gussow

“If you have a parrot and you don’t teach it to say, ‘Help, they’ve turned me into a parrot’, you are wasting everybody’s time.”

        — Julia Segal (@juliasegal)

“Prejudices about what it means to be a person necessarily exclude those who are not bright on the stage of common action; those who do not welcome the glare of shining, blinding smiles, who do not lean closer to hear the roar and macramé of shouted words, who do not cut themselves and mould their flesh and spirit to fit the narrow human path, funnelling upward without looking back.”

        — Dawn Prince-Hughes, Songs of the Gorilla Nation

If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don’t make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: “He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.”

        — Epictetus

“In a perfect world, you and I probably wouldn’t exists, so let’s not hope for one.”

        — Ze Frank, The Show, 18 Apr 2006

“There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.”

        — Ursula K. Le Guin

“One man’s constant is another man’s variable.”

        — Alan Perlis

“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.”

        — Abigail Van Buren

“A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard.”

“Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point.”

        — Eliezer Yudkowsky

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”

        — James Bryant Conant

“It is better to do the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way.”

        — Richard Hamming

“The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

        — Alex Carey

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”

        — Clay Shirky, South by Southwest 2010

“Perfect pitch is when you throw a banjo into a trash can and hit an accordion.”

        — Willie Nelson

“If you are using PowerPoint to even 25% of its potential, your presentation will probably suck.”

        — Karl Seguin, Goodbye Microsoft Office

“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.”

        — Horace Greeley

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

        — Michel de Montaige

“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.”

        — Unknown

“Being realistic is the most commonly travelled road to mediocrity.”

        — Will Smith

“There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter.”

        — Billy Connolly

“Truth is not determined by majority vote.”

        — Doug Gwyn

“It’s hard to be a James Bond in an Abbott and Costello world.”

        — Unknown