Quotes I've Collected

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for
complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the
philosophy is kindness.
	-Dalai Lama
%
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes
you feel a thought.
	-E.Y. Harburg
%
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
	-Confucious
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The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but a means
to the education
	-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
	-Bertrand Russell
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Fall seven times, stand up eight
	-Japanese Proverb
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When all men think alike, no one thinks very much
	-Walter Lippman
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To be loved is to be fortunate, but to be hated is to achieve distinction
	-Minna Antrim
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Bridges are for burning, so don't you let that yearning pass you by
	-James Taylor, Walking Man
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I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary times, a dime
goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than adding to the
indignity of relief
	-Phil Ochs, from an interview with Michael Ross, 1969
%
It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of
struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat
the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality,
that's religion. That's art. That's life.
	-Phil Ochs, from An American Ordeal
%
All of us who were connected with computers lusted after them. To have a
computers was better than sex.
	-Ed Roberts, Inventor of the altair 8800
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Cream rises to the top, but cream isn't the only thing that floats
%
       I need new enemies
      I need new strategies
I need the pain to feel something
   I need to shed some skin
      To be like me again
         A brand new me
	-Be Like Me, mdfmk
%
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human
face-forever
	-1984, George Orwell
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Three great virtues of programming are laziness, impatience, and hubris
	-Larry Wall
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Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun
	-Bruce Campbell as Ash, Army of Darkness
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There are some who argue that this decreases readability. They are wrong.
	-Randal L. Schwartz on the use of sort { $a <=> $b } @list
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When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
I know my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
	-Paul Simon, Kodachrom
%
So that'll be 2 T1s and a Newsfeed - Would you like clues with that?
	-Hillary Gorman, www.hillary.net
%
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people
very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
	-The Hitchhicker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
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As folks might have suspected, not much survives except roaches, and they
don't carry large enough packets fast enough...
	-About the Internet and nuclear war as quoted in
	Christopher E. Brown 's sig
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not
worth knowing.
	-Alan J. Perlis
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Earth is a single point of failure.
	-Quote from Patrick Greenwell's signature
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build
a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying,  take orders, give orders, cooperate,
act alone,  solve equations, analyze a new problem,  pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
	-Robert A. Heinlein
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I bet the human brain is a kludge
	-Marvin Minsky
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*** Topic for #lavalamp: Curiosity killed the cat, but where human beings
are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance.
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He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt.  He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice.
	-Albert Einstein
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Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is
because we are not the person involved
	-Mark Twain
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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that
would also stop you from doing clever things.
	-Doug Gwyn
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Love is much more evil than hate will ever be.
	-found in the fraggle.c source
%
Security Guard: We're securing the building, please find the nearest exit
Avi: There are machines with no root passwd over there! (referring to some
windows boxen)
%
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.
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There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled.
This time was called the Dark Ages.
	-Richard Lederer
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I have seen the best minds of my generation 
destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix...
	-Howl, by Allen Ginsberg
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All science is either physics or stamp collecting
	-Physicist Ernest Rutherford
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The scientist does not study Nature because it is useful; he studies it
because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If Nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if Nature
were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.
	-Mathemetician Henri Poincare
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Use proper Unix
	-Mark Allen doing problem where it was important to use proper units
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'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds
	-Syadasti
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If god had intended for people to smoke, he would have lit them on fire.
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The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be
when you kill them.
	-William Clayton
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Now is not the time to make new enemies. 
	-Voltaire, on his deathbed, after being told to renounce the devil 
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No man is good nor wise enough, to rule another or disown the rights of
every woman and man to live and let live, and be left alone. I talk about
abortion. I say 'Fuck the Government'. Does that offend you? Good! I
respect no government who will make any law that restricts speech, in any
medium. I will be offensive, and I will take offense at what others say,
BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH THEIR RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE.
%
...in the beginning, man created god
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The reasonable man adopts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adopt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man
	-George Bernard Shaw
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"Nah, mathemeticians stay away from actual, specific numbers as much as
possible. We like to talk about numbers without actually exposing
ourselves to them--that's what computers are for."
	-Randy Waterhouse, Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
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Science is like sex: Sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not
the reason we are doing it.
	-Richard Feynman
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...I want to apologize in advance if I come across as overly inflammatory
or antagonistic, as I've just been reading Slashdot.
	-Bill Jonas, bj@netaxs.com
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Trying to learn to hack on a DOS or Windows machine or under MacOS is like
trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast.
	-Eric S Raymond, tuxedo.org/~esr
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There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We
don't believe this to be a coincidence.
	-Jeremy S. Anderson
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SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical reasons* why it is
necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then.
	-jfw@proteon.com (John Woods)
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i am the truth from which you run
	-nine inch nails, mr self destruct
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god money's not looking for the cure
god money's not concerned with the sick among the pure
	-nine inch nails, head like a hole
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i used to have something inside
now just this hole that's open wide
	-nine inch nails, terrible lie
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my lips may promise but my heart is a whore
	-nine inch nails, last
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i put my faith in god and my trust in you
now there's nothing more fucked up i could do
	-nine inch nails, wish
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i built it up now i take it apart climbed up real high now fall down real far
	-nine inch nails, wish
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don't open your eyes you won't like what you see
the blind have been blessed with security
	-nine inch nails, happiness in slavery
%
don't open your eyes you won't like what you see
the devils of truth steal the souls of the free
	-nine inch nails, happiness in slavery
%
his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
demands devotion atrocities done in his name
	-nine inch nails, heresy
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problems do have solutions you know
a lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash
	-nine inch nails, the downward spiral
%
everyone i know
goes away in the end
	-nine inch nails, hurt
%
this world rejects me
this world threw me away
this world never gave me a chance
this world's gonna have to pay
	-nine inch nails, burn
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and in a dream i'm a different me
with a perfect you
we fit perfectly
and for once in my life i feel complete-
and i still want to ruin it
	-nine inch nails, even deeper
%
tried to save a place from the cuts and the scratches
tried to overcome the complications and the catches
nothing ever grows and the sun doesn't shine all day
tried to save myself but myself keeps slipping away
	-nine inch nails, into the void
%
there is a game i play
try to make myself okay
try so hard to make the pieces all fit
smash it all part
just for the fuck of it
	-nine inch nails, the big come down
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A kid asked me how I learned to play guitar so good with one hand. Well
when you've got a face like this you learn to do a lot of things good
one-handed.
	-Type O Negative, Peter Steele
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built myself a nice little cage  with bars of anger  and a lock of rage
i can't help asking  who's got the key  when i know damned well it's me
no i ain't hinting for sympathy  i'm used to dealing with apathy
the scars on my wrists may seem like a crime  just wish me better luck next time
so what if i died a thousand deaths  you think i'm insane but i have no regrets
one more time won't matter no question  suicide is self expression
	-Type O Negative, Gravitational Constant
%
trust and you will be trusted
said the liar to the fool
	-Type O Negative
	Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity
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do you believe in forever  i don't even believe in tomorrow
the only thing that lasts forever  are memories and sorrow
	-Type O Negative
	Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity
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where there's a womb there's a way with you it's for free
	-Type O Negative
	Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity
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there is no pain like that of desire
is there no difference between women and fire
one burns the spirit  the other the flesh
is sex worth the price of certain death
	-Type O Negative, Prelude to Agony
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Every day is Halloween
	-Type O Negative, Black No. 1
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Life's a game I cannot win
Both good and bad must surely end
The mirrors always tell the truth
I love myself for hating you
	-Type O Negative, Everyone I Love Is Dead
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The truths which God revealed have been overthrown by the truths which man
has discovered.
%
The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who
reads it.
	-Robert G. Ingersoll
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If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
	-Albert Einstein
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Whenever I think of how religion started, I picture some frustrated old man
making out a list of all the ways he could gain power, until he finally came
up with the great solution of constant fear and guilt, then he leaped up and
started planning a new wardrobe.
	-Steve Blake, An Incarnation Of God Is Absurd
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I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you
will understand why I dismiss yours.
	-Stephen Roberts
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I don't think we're [here] for anything, we're just products of evolution.
You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's
a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch.
	-Dr. James Watson, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of DNA
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Religion is excellent stuff for keeping the common people quiet.
	-Napoleon Bonaparte
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Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable. .
 . . A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the
capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is
actually ill.
	-Henry Lewis "H.L." Mencken
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I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an
atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually
unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge
that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or
agnostic.  I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I
so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
	-Isaac Asimov
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God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
	-Voltaire
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Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies.
	-Thomas Jefferson
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It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it
is the parts that I do understand.
	-Mark Twain
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But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and
emancipator of worlds.  He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and
obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and
humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.
	-Bakunin, God and the State (1874)
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faith n. 2.Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
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Love your country, but never trust its government.
	-Robert A. Heinlein.
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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
	-Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
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I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as 
necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
	-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
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The state calls its own violence `law', but that of the individual `crime'
	-Max Stirner
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A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he
cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable
creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself. 
	-John Stuart Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862
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You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the
very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for
independence.
	-Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
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Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.
	-Mohandas Gandhi
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The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment
doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a
'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet ...  The Fourth Amendment
doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless
some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has
no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.
	-Harry Browne, 1996 USA presidential candidate, Libertarian Party
%
The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood.  The
person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the
first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's
liberty.  Are you free? 
	-Andrew Ford
%
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without
bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so
costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the
odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a
worse case.  You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory,
because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
	-Winston Churchill
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state
is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we
suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries *by a government*, which we
might expect in a country *without government*, our calamities is heightened
by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
	-Thomas Paine
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He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression: for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that
will reach unto himself.
	-Thomas Paine
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The passion for destruction is also a creative passion
	-Mikhail Bakunin, Reaction in Germany
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And the best thing you ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all
	-Indigo Girls, Close To Fine
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Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have much
of anything to do with it.
%
The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics
is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.
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Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a
million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.
	-L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology
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Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
	-G.B. Shaw
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Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country did to you
	-KMFDM, Dogma
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Necessity is the mother of kludge
%
There are times when I'm just a shell
When I do not feel anything for anyone
All I feel is hollow and bruised
Used up and misused
Forced to be someone I don't want to be
	-Stabbing Westward, Darkest Days
%
The more I feel
The more I die
Nothing to give
Nothing inside
	-Stabbing Westward, Everything I Touch I Break
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I do not want
I only need
	-Stabbing Westward, Everything I Touch I Break
%
I know that you've been damaged     Your soul has suffered such abuse
But I am not your savior            I am just as fucked as you
I am just as fucked as you          I can not save you
I can't even save myself            So just save yourself
	-Stabbing Westward, Save Yourself
%
So this is where I say goodbye
This is where my story ends
And if there's one thing that I've learned from life
It's that it gets you in the end
	-Stabbing Westward, Goodbye
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And now I'd like to say that crime sure doesn't pay
But if you want to make some money on the slide
Well you can always rent the US government
It's the best one that money can buy
	-Phil Ochs, Ballad Of BIllie Sol
%
The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development
time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the
development time.
	-Ninety-Ninety Rule, attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs
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I don't mind live bootlegs, I think that if a fan will go and buy a bootleg,
it's likely they already own the legitimate studio albums.
        -Josh, Type O Negative
%
You try to lead a happy life
But love keeps getting in the way
	-Ted Ekman, Hotter Than The Sun
%
Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or
rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is
self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits
atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
	-The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror. To learn
irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
	-Bene Gesserit saying, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
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Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of
those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the
will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of
government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
	-Law and Governance, The Spacing Guild Manual
	Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according
to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom
because that is according to my principles.
	-Ancient philosopher Louis Veuillot, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his
life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to
him, consumed his energy.
	-Addenda to Orders in Council
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...we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was
in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he
could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can
learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.
	-The Humanity of Muad'Dib, Princess Irulan
	Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh.
	-Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib, Princess Irulan
	Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and
oppression to develop psychic muscles.
	-Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib, Princess Irulan
	Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning
"That path leads ever down into stagnation."
	-Arrakis Awakening, Princes Irulan, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
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We came from Caladan-a paradise world for our form of life. There existed no
need on Caladan to build a physical paradise or a paradise of the mind-we
could see the actuality all around us. And the price we paid was the price
men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life-we went soft, we
lost our edge.
	-Muad'Dib: Conversations, Princess Irulan
	Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
But I realize that humans cannot bear very much reality. Most of our lives
are a flight from selfhood. Most prefer the truths of the stable. You stick
your heads into the stanchions and munch contentedly until you die. Others
use you for their purposes. Not once do you live outside the stable to lift
your head and be your own creature.
	-The Preacher, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
I mean to disturb you! It is my intention! I come here to combat the fraud
and illusion of your conventional, institutionalized religion. As with all
such religions, your institution moves toward cowardice, it moves toward
mediocrity, inertia, and self-satisfaction.
	-The Preacher, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions
change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably
fall short.
	-Mentat Handbook, Heretics of Dune, Frank Herbert
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Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the
past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus they change the
future as well.
	-Leto II, His Voice, Dar-es-Balat, Heretics of Dune, Frank Herbert
%
I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions
affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call
peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.
	-Leto II, Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
%
The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way
can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such
demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then changer comes
and throws our old ideas away.
	-The Zensufi Master, Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
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Education is no substitute for intelligence.
	-Mentat Text One (decto), Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
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Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is a fine
point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job
security.
	-Bene Gesserit Coda, Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
%
Religion (emulation of adults by the child) encysts past mythologies:
guesses, hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in
search of personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And
always an unspoken commandment: Thou shalt not question! We break that
commandment daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest
creativity.
	-Bene Gesserit Coda, Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
%
Educational bureaucracies dull a child's questing sensitivity. The young
must be damped down. Never let them know how good they can be. That brings
change. Spend lots of committee time talking about how to deal with
exceptional students. Don't spend any time dealing with how the conventional
teacher feels threatened by emerging talents and squelches them because of a
deep seated desire to feel superior and safe in a safe environment.
	-Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert
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Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
	-Ogden Nash
%
One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
	-Friedrich Nietzshe
%
I look at you and I see myself and I cry for the child in both of us who
didn't get the future they dreamed of
	-Ariane Mitchell
%
Pessimists see optimists' minds as half empty
	-Professor Ashfield, ?, www.ashfieldonline.com
%
Hey, anything's art if you do it in a black sweater
	-Mr. Wiggles, Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles, Neil Swaab
%
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
	-Paradise Lost, John Milton
%
We were perfect when we started
I've been wondering where we've gone
	-A Murder Of One, Counting Crows
%
"Commemorating the Holocaust is /not/, not not not not /not/, the same
thing as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the
commemorationists are just whiners. They think that if everyone feels bad
about past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one
will want to commit genocide in the future."
...
"Look at Bosnia!" ... "Human nature doesn't change, Randy. Education is
hopeless. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or
Nazis just like that."
	-Avi, Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
%
	Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that
under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the
world.  If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real
hard for ten years.  If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers
and I swore myself to revenge.  If I got a fatal disease, had one year to
live, devoted it to wiping out street crime.  If I just dropped out and
devoted myself to being bad.  
	Hiro used to feel that way too, but then he ran into Raven.  In a
way, this is liberating.  He no longer has to worry about trying to be the
baddest motherfucker in the world.  The position has been taken.  The
crowning touch, the one thing that really puts world-class
badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb.
If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire.  Maybe find
Raven's Achilles' heal.  Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast
one.  But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of
reach.
	Which is ok.  Sometimes it's all right to be a little bad.  To know
your limitations.  Make do with what you've got.
	-Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson
%
"I refuse to prove that I exist", says God "for proof denies faith and
without faith I am nothing"
"But," says Man, "the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not
have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
argument you don't. QED"
"Oh, dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that", and promptly vanishes in a
puff of logic.
   -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
%
You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right,
it is obvious that it is right -- at least if you have any experience --
because what usually happens is that more comes out than goes in ... The
inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are
simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not
count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very
complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is
not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.
   -Physicist Richard Feynman
%
	"Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is
governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its
feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.
Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the
crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or
civilized, are secretly kind-hearted, and shrink from inflicting pain; but
in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to
assert themselves. Think of it! one kind-hearted creature spies upon
another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt
both of them. Speaking as an expert, I /know/ that ninety-nine out of a
hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that
foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long
ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and
silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the
harrying of a witch. And yet apparently /everybody/ hates witches and wants
them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the
most noise -  perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a
determined front will do it - and in a week all the sheep will wheel and
follow him, and the witch hunting will come to a sudden end. In fact this
happened within these ten years, in a little country called New England.
	"Monarchies, aristocracies and religions are all based upon that
large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and
his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's
eyes.  These institutions will always remain, always flourish, and always
oppress you, affront you and degrade you, because you will always be and
remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority
of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to either of these
institutions."
	-The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain
%
	"Strange! that you should not have suspected, years ago, centuries,
ages, aeons ago! for you have existed, companionless, through all the
eternities.  Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your
universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fictions! Strange,
because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a
God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make
bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a
single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut
it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his
other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed
his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who
mouths justice, and invented hell - mouths mercy, and invented hell -
mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and
invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who
frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without
invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon
man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and
finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave
to worship him! . . . .
	"You perceive, /now/, that these things are all impossible, except
in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the
silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in
a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are
all present - you should have recognized them earlier . . . . .
	"It is true, that which I have revealed to you: there is no God, no
universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a
Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but You. And You are
but a /Thought/ - a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought,
a wandering forlorn among empty eternities!"
	He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized that
all he had said was true.
                              The end
	-The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain
%
When it comes to other things, you have to balance. Is this a good
implementation?  Is this really adding a feature that is good? Sometimes
even when the feature is good, it turns out that either the interface is
bad or the implementation of that feature kind of implies that you can
never do something else, now or in the future . For example--though this is
sort of an interface issue--suppose somebody has some stupid implementation
of a filesystem where names can be no longer than 14 characters. The thing
you really want to avoid having these limitations in an interface that is
set in stone.  Otherwise when you look to extend the filesystem, you are
screwed because you have to find a way to fit within this lesser interface
that wa s locked in before. Worse than that, every program that requests a
filename may on ly have space in a variable for, say, 13 characters, so if
you were to pass them a longer filename it would crash them.  Right now the
only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft. Essentially, in
order to read DOS/Windows files you have this ridiculous interface where
all files had eleven characters, eight plus three. With NT, which allowed
long filenames, they had to add a complete set of new routines to do the
same things the other routines did, except that this set can also handle
larger filenames. So this is an example of a bad interface polluting future
works.
%
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding,
"take me to your Lizard."

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so
straightforward. On this world, the people are people. The leaders are
lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why
don't people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote,
so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more
or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard
might get in."
	-So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish, Douglas Adams