Notable Quotes

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.

--Indira Gandhi

Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class. This, at least, is its inevitable consequence, if not the immediate result.

--Alexis de Tocqueville

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

--Benjamin Franklin

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

--Charles Krauthammer

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

--Plato

Worry is interest paid before a debt is due.

--Unknown

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

--Thomas Jefferson

It's hard to be prejudiced against someone you love.

--Winton Marsalles, in interview on CBC, March 20, 2001

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

--Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

As widely reported in the popular media, NT 5.0 [AKA Windows 2000] is the last nail in the Unix coffin. However, Unix isn't in the coffin. It's putting in an honest day's work and looking down into the grave, wondering what the heck is sealing itself into a wooden box 6 feet underground...

--Unknown

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

--P. J. O'Rourke

If you try to solve problems you don't already know that people have, you create unnecessary complexity. Always start with the simplest possible program.

--Russell Nelson

When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ... Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.

--Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"

In China we can question Darwin but we can't question the government; in America, you can question the government but you can't question Darwin.

--a Chinese scientist

Should the US government lift the export controls on strong encryption? Yes, I think so. You can buy better stuff in Europe than you can here. We don't have a monopoly on brains.

--Interview with Walter Wriston as reported in Wired 4.10

Everybody has opinions: I have them, you have them. And we are all told from the moment we open our eyes, that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Well, that's horsepuckey, of course. We are not entitled to our opinions; we are entitled to our informed opinions. Without research, without background, without understanding, it's nothing. It's just bibble-babble.

--Harlan Ellison

Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because we have some fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft's poor products are one of the reasons we're in business. We pick on them because they've done more to harm Internet security than anyone else, because they repeatedly lie to the public about their products' security, and because they do everything they can to convince people that the problems lie anywhere but inside Microsoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kind of nonsense from Microsoft and its products.

--Bruce Schneier

The state ... need not interact with people justly or with any concern for their preferences or rights at all, much less actually arrive at mutually satisfactory terms with them. It may act unilaterally, and the individual has no recourse other than to accept whatever the state determines with regard to how much of his property will be expropriated, what his children will be taught in school, or where he must be sent to fight and die.

--Thomas Woods

More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

--Bruce Schneier in an Interview by ITConversations

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

--Milton Friedman

Parts that don't exist can't break.

--Russell Nelson

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

--Barry Goldwater

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

--James Madison

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

--Noam Chomsky

Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.

--Melisa Schoeppler, burn victim

I dare not commit myself with politicians. No one knows what they will be next year by what they are this year.

--Francis Wayland (1796-1865)

Experience is a teacher that gives the examination first and the lesson afterwards.

--Unknown

[C]ompetition is valuable only because, and so far as, its results are unpredictable and on the whole different from those which anyone has, or could have, deliberately aimed at.

--F.A. Hayek, Nobel Prize-winning economist

Things can only really be scientifically true if they could also be false with different data.

--Karl Popper

The most important things in life are not for sale.

--Unknown

It takes a lot of hard work to made something easy. Then when you're done, people look at it and ask, "Oh, it's so simple; what was the big deal?"

--Ralph Johnson

Schools may have eliminated winners and losers, but life hasn't.

--Hugh Arscott

Microsoft shapes NT to respond to competitive threats. To commit to NT means to commit to a relatively unknown future, since new threats to Microsoft appear on a regular basis.

--Nicholas Petreley from "The Last 10 Minutes", NC World June 1998

Chance is a word void of meaning, nothing happens without a cause.

--Voltaire; Philosophy Dictionary

Today, wanting someone else's money is called 'need', wanting to keep your own money is called 'greed', and 'compassion' is when politicians arrange the transfer.

--Joseph Sobran

The new glue is, unfortunately, ignored by recent versions of the BIND cache; the detailed technical explanation for this is that the BIND company is a bunch of idiots.

--D. J. Bernstein, discussing yet another BIND failing.

The past is inaccurate. Whoever lives long enough knows how much what he had seen with his own eyes becomes overgrown with rumor, legend a magnifying or belittling hearsay. "It was not like that at all!" -- he would like to exclaim, but will not, for they would have seen only his moving lips without hearing his voice.

--Czeslaw Milosz (translated)

Rights that apply only to some are not rights in the best sense of the word at all.

--Sigrid Klaus (Saskatoon Star Phoenix editorial March 30 2004)

If you think you need threads then your processes are too fat.

--Rob Pike

The fundamental aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamoring to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

--Henry Louis Mencken

Has political correctness turned us all into a bunch of ninnies? Joe Lieberman ...[is] a deeply religious and observant Jew. Terrific. But a similar Christian would be described as evangelical at least and probably as a fundamentalist. Just imagine the outrage over a fundamentalist Christian as VP. I find the hypocrisy hair-raising.

--Barbara Amiel, "Hypocrisy in politics", Maclean's September 4, 2000

A strong government has the effect of infantizing adults. This cannot be a good thing.

--Russell Nelson, aka The Angry Economist

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

--Albert Einstein

It's not that perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

--Erik Naggum

They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization.

--Mayor Vincent J. Cicani on the ACLU's suit to remove a city nativity scene.

Just wait, My crystal ball is infallible.

--Linus Torvalds, discussing the future of smart I/O hardware.

I think there's no greater indictment of the welfare state than the fact that the black family held together through centuries of slavery and discrimination, but fell apart in the liberal welfare state.

--Thomas Sowell

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

--C.A.R. Hoare

If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

--Douglas Adams in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens."

--Bruce Schneier

In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

--Networking truth #12, Ross Callon, RFC 1925

If the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) will deliver democracy, why do concerned citizens not currently have access to the FTAA text? Why is the Canadian government preparing the largest police and security operation in the country's history, estimated to cost $30 million? Does our democracy not entitle us to demonstrate against something we believe is so fundamentally wrong?

--Martin Olszynksi

Power can be used for good or evil, but it's usually used for evil. Better not to concentrate it.

--Russell Nelson, aka The Angry Economist

A computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can't program state machines.

--Alan Cox

Chill, folks. Markets are public places where makers and vendors offer users and customers lots of choice. Not coliseums where gladiators kick and stab each other to death while the rest of us cheer over bruises and blood.

--Doc Searls

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

--Ronald Regan

Democracy is not freedom; democracy is the tyranny of the majority. When the majority is free to oppress the minority, nobody is free, because in some aspect of their life, everybody is a minority.

--Russell Nelson, aka The Angry Economist

If you can't say what you mean, you can never be trusted to mean what you say.

--Character on Babylon 5

Money goes where it is wanted and stays where it is well treated, and that's all she wrote. This annoys governments to no end.

--Interview with Walter Wriston as reported in Wired 4.10

Think of it this way: threads are like salt, not like pasta. You like salt, I like salt, we all like salt. But we eat more pasta.

--Larry McVoy, a Linux kernel developer

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.

--Dick Armey

Reason is not useless, but reason is not enough. [...] Reason and faith are like two shoes -- you can get a lot further with both than with just one.

--Character on Babylon 5

During this [last] century's wars, there were some 38 million battle deaths, but almost four times more people -- at least 170 million -- were killed by governments for ethnic, racial, tribal, religious, or political reasons. I call this phenomenon democide, and it means that authoritarian and totalitarian governments are more deadly than war.

--R.J. Rummel

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete stand-still today. The solution ... is patenting as much as we can. ... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

--Bill Gates

I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.

--Paul Tomblin

The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption] would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.

--Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.

Bloat is not about being big. Bloat is about being slow and stupid and not realizing that it's because of design mistakes.

--Linus Torvalds

Those who know that it cannot be done should not be allowed to interfere with those who are doing it.

--Unknown

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

--Henry Spencer

If users are made to understand that the system administrator's job is to make computers run, and not to make them happy, they can, in fact, be made happy most of the time. If users are allowed to believe that the system administrator's job is to make them happy, they can, in fact, never be made happy.

--Paul Evans

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

--G. K. Chesterton

There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America. One is known as the Left, and the other is known as the Right.

--Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

--Jamie Zawinski, in comp.lang.emacs

Markets are self-correcting. That's why I trust markets more than governments. Governments usually aren't self-correcting, until too late.

--Interview with Walter Wriston as reported in Wired 4.10

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

--Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910

Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.

--G. K. Chesterton

There is no getting around the fact that the institution that is the source of funding will ultimately make the decisions on how resources are used.

--Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

--Thomas Jefferson

The axfr-get output is designed to work. It is not designed for people to read.

--D. J. Bernstein, discussing perceived problems in automated data transfer tools.

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.

--Will Smith

An open mind, like an open mouth, does have a purpose: and that is, to close it upon something solid. Otherwise, it could end up like a city sewer, rejecting nothing.

--G. K. Chesterton

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

--Thomas Jefferson

The only way to live happily with people is to overlook their faults and admire their virtues. That's what they are doing for you...

--Unknown

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 in Guardian, August 25, 1995

I would not, could not SAVE ON PHONE,
I would not, could not BUY YOUR LOAN,
I would not, could not MAKE MONEY FAST,
I would not, could not SEND NO CA,
I would not, could not SEE YOUR SITE,
I would not, could not EAT VEG-I-MITE,
I do *not* *like* GREEN CARDS AND SPAM!
                           M A D - I - A M!

--Found in various USENET signatures.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

--Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept. 1982

Our problem today is not that we have lost our way. Mankind is forever losing his way. Our problem is that we have lost our address.

--G. K. Chesterton

Definition of Windows 95: A 32-bit extension and graphical shell for a 16 Bit patch to an 8 Bit OS originally coded for an 4 Bit CPU, written by a 2-Bit Company that can't stand 1 Bit of competition.

--Unknown

Practically all the major technological changes since the beginning of industrialization have resulted in unforseen consequences ... Our very power over nature threatens to become itself a source of power that is out of control ... Choices are posed that are too large, too complex, too important and comprehensive to be safely left to fallible human beings.

--Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener as quoted in Wired 5.06 (page 110)

If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers.

--Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, in response to the latest Microsoft attack on open source software.

Patents don't encourage innovation; they take it out into a back alley and beat it senseless.

--Jim Rapoza

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

--George Bernard Shaw

Zero Defects, n.:
   The result of shutting down a production line.

--Unknown

Nobody spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.

--Milton Friedman

Warren [Buffett] is famous for driving older-model cars. In the early days of his partnership he drove a VW Beetle. People observing this attribute it to a general lack of interest in acquiring material items. What they fail to see is how his compounding influences his spending habits. An automobile that costs $20,000 today will be worth little or nothing in ten years. But Warren knows that he can get a 23% annual compounding rate of return on his investments. This means that $20,000 invested today will be worth $158,518 in ten years. In twenty years it will be worth $1,256,412, and in thirty years it will be worth $9,958,257. To Warren, $9,958,257 is just way too much money to throw away on a new car.

--Mary Buffett & David Clark, "Buffettology", (C) 1997, p.76

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

--Hermann Goering, Nazi and war criminal, 1883-1946

A person, who is nice to you and rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

--Unknown

The world is changing every day. The only question is, who's doing it?

--Character on Babylon 5

The Libertarian Party is at best an effort to do the least bad possible, and who would vote for that?

--Russell Nelson, aka The Angry Economist

Character is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

--Congressman J. C. Watts (R Oklahoma)

You don't understand quantum mechanics, you just get used to it.

--attributed to Feynman, borrowed from von Neumann.

... the borrower is servant to the lender.

--Proverbs 22:7

Additions? Comments? Corrections? Questions? Mail me!