Quotes

"Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality." -- William Ernest Hocking

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." -- Winston Churchill

"Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it." -- Maurice Chevalier

"Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant." -- Edward Gibbon

"Many a young lady does not realize just how strong her love for a young man is until he fails to pass the approval test with her parents."

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." -- Bertrand Russell

"Many, if not all, of my presidential opponents are certifiable idiots." -- Philippine presidential candidate Miriam Defensor Santiago

"Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief." -- Arthur Schnitzler

"Mate, this parrot would be bigger than England."

"Mathematics may humbly help in the market-place, but it also reaches to the stars." -- Herbert Westren Turnbull

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture." -- Bertrand Russell

"Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." -- Aldous Huxley

"Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity." -- Charles G. Dawes

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it." -- Seymour Cray (on virtual memory)

"Men and women, women and men. It will never work." -- Erica Jong

"Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations." -- Machiavelli

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Men have fiendishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell only to find it ridiculous." -- George Santayana

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill

"Money is always there, but the pockets change." -- Gertrude Stein

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." -- H. G. Wells

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt to people we personally dislike." -- Oscar Wilde

"Morality is the herd-instinct of the individual." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Most bad government has grown out of too much government." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards." -- Soren F. Petersen

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -- Oscar Wilde

"Most people want security in this world, not liberty." -- H.L. Mencken

"Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Most religions do not make men better, only warier." -- Elias Canetti

"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." -- P. J. Plauger

"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose." -- John Haldane

"My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists." -- Jean Rostand

"My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths..." -- Harlan Ellison

"My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"My school colors were clear. We used to say, 'I'm not naked, I'm in the band.'" -- Steven Wright

"My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself." -- Emo Philips

"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future." -- Ralph Abraham

"My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." -- Hermann Weyl

"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study." -- Francis Bacon

"Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- William Pitt

"Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?" -- _Black Adder II_

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." -- Neils Bohr

"Never judge a book by its movie." -- J.W. Eagan

"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level." -- Quentin Crisp

"Never lose your sense of the superficial." -- Lord Northcliffe

"New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian." -- Russell Baker

"New York: A third-rate Babylon." -- H. L. Mencken

"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Next week your lesson will go into more detail about how USENET differs from reality, even if you aren't able to tell the difference." -- Brian Reid

"Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive." -- Thomas Chandler Haliburton

"No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind." -- William Somerset Maugham

"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." -- Aristotle

"No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions." -- Charles Steinmetz

"No matter how hard you try, there is always going to be someone more underground than you." -- Robert Fulford

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it." -- Tallulah Bankhead

"Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from." -- Jodie Foster

"Not to engage in this pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men." -- Mortimer J. Adler

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him." -- Fyodor Dostoyevski

"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear." -- Albert Camus

"Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." -- Albert Einstein

"Nothing is so aggravating as calmness." -- Oscar Wilde

"Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly." -- Horace

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." -- Hassan I Sabbah

"Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success." -- Christopher Lasch

"Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." -- Oscar Wilde

"Novelty is not necessarily a virtue." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Now I'm lost in Arizona // On the highway of my mind." -- Neraid Cluster

"Now is the time for all good men to come to." -- Walt Kelly

"Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity." -- Remy de Gourmont

"Oh look, my brain just exploded! Cool idea, though." -- Carl Rigney

"Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too." -- Lichty & Wagner

"Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man." -- Leon Trotsky

"On applause: They named it Ovation from the Latin _ovis_, a sheep." -- Plutarch

"On the other hand, you have different fingers." -- Stephen Wright

"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time." -- George Orwell

"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." -- Stewart Brand

"One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one form to bring them all and in the darkness rewrite the hell out of them." -- DEC, sendmail.cf

"One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan. One grows tired of almost everything, Castellan, except power." -- The Doctor

"One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious." -- Chateaubriand

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making new discoveries." -- A. A. Milne

"One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going." -- J. B. Priestley

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." -- Will Durant.

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -- Bertrand Russell

"One who contends with immortals lives a very short life." -- Homer

"Only a mediocre man is always at his best." -- W. Somerset Maugham

"Optimism is the content of small men in high places." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid." -- Heinrich Heine

"Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl." -- Mike Adams

"Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead." -- Sinclair Lewis

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams

"Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Our love is God. Let's go grab a slushie" -- J .D., _Heathers_

"Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after." -- Alexander Pope

"Outer space is no place for a person of breeding." -- Lady Violet Bonham Carter

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." -- unknown

"Paper has a genius for multiplication that cannot be equalled anywhere else in nature." -- Hugh Keenleyside

"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better." -- Laurie Anderson

"Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of a field in hope that the cow will back up to them." -- Albert Hubbard

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Patriotism is an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles." -- George Jean Nathan

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." -- Oscar Wilde

"People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases." -- Mark Twain

"People are much too solemn about things -- I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds." -- Aldous Huxley

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." -- Logan Pearsall Smith

"People that are really weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." -- J. Danforth Quayle

"People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense." -- Ken Kesey

"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." -- Richard Nixon

"People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy." -- Bob Hope

"People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes." -- Terry Pratchett

"Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being." -- John Updike

"Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom." -- Mark Twain

"Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures." -- Oscar Wilde

"Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval." -- Oscar Wilde

"Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy." -- Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim

"Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies." -- Dalton Camp

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." -- Frank Zappa

"Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else." -- Heywood Broun

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat." -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

"Practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect." -- Vince Lombardi

"Predicting the future, as we all know, is risky. Predicting the evolution of new technology is downright hazardous." -- Leon Cooper

"Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party." -- Joseph Stalin

"Prizes are for children." -- Charles Edward Ives

"Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to totalitarianism." -- Noam Chomsky

"Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one." -- James Madison

"Puritanism -- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -- H. L. Mencken

"Put on your hobbit costume and go -- AAAAAAAGH! GET THE GODDAMN CAT OFF ME!"

"Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life." -- Oscar Wilde

"Que sera, seratonin! (Meep.)" -- Mercy

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." -- Francais Bacon

"Real Men are NOT afraid to say: 'Fuck OFF, you're Not my type.'" -- Drieux

"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding." -- Ezra Loomis Pound

"Real happiness, in politics, is a wide-open hammer shot on some poor bastard who knows he's been trapped, but can't flee." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". -- Philip K. Dick

"Reality is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes." -- (My Life With The) Thrill Kill Cult

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you also have an obligation to be one." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Remember, folks. Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph." -- Jim Samuels

"Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering." -- Tom Stoppard

"Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others." -- Oscar Wilde

"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." -- George Orwell

"Science has made gods of us before we were even worthy of being men." -- Jean Rostand

"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof." -- Ashley Montague

"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated." -- George Santayana

"Seek simplicity, and distrust it." -- Alfred North Whitehead

"Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity." -- Alan Watts

"Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious." -- H. L. Mencken

"Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live." -- Oscar Wilde

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." -- Oscar Wilde

"Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest." -- Jimmy Swaggart

"Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated." -- M. C. Reed

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best." -- Woody Allen

"Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble." -- John Barrymore

"She was beautiful, even though she was dead." -- _Venus in Furs_

"She's a very dominant woman; she walks on the ground I worship." -- Dennis Miller

"Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all." -- Winston Churchill

"Shouldn't we be carefully placing these comics in plastic bags?" "No, we have lives." -- MST3K

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends." -- S. Weir Mitchell

"Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex." -- Oscar Wilde

"Since when was genius found respectable?" -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily." -- David Byrne

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." -- Bertrand Russell

"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. -- Charley Reese

"Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another." -- Oscar Wilde

"Solutions are not the answer." -- Richard Nixon

"Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some to be chewed and digested." -- Francis Bacon

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." -- T. S. Eliot

"Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps." -- Emo Philips

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." -- Gloria Steinem

"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them." -- Joseph Heller

"Some people have so much respect for their superiors they have none left for themselves." -- Peter Mcarthur

"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it." -- Gordon R. Dickson

"Some people move in lesbian circles. I move in bisexual dodecahedrons." -- R.K.

"Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do." -- Bertrand Russell

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is quite staggering." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped." -- Sam Levenson

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." -- William Blake

"Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." -- Henry Ward Beecher

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides." -- Margaret Thatcher

"Stay away from that jazz man, Lisa. Nothing personal, I just fear the unfamiliar." -- Marge Simpson

"Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom." -- Bergen Evans

"Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath." -- Oscar Levant

"Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic." -- Roy Blount, Jr.

"Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not." -- Frank Zappa

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them." -- Bill Vaughan

"Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows." -- Ambrose Bierce

"Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work." -- Pliny The Elder

"Sure, there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too." -- Richard M. Nixon

"Surely where there's smoke there's fire? No, where there's so much smoke there's smoke." -- John A. Wheeler

"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves." -- Abraham Lincoln

"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy." -- Anonymous

"Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'" -- Lenny Bruce

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves." -- Dorothy Parker

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves." -- Rudyard Kipling

"Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry." -- Nathalie Sarraute

"Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything." -- Fred Allen

"Television is for appearing on -- not for looking at." -- Noel Coward

"Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel." -- Gore Vidal

"Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy." -- Richard M. Nixon

"Television: chewing gum for the eyes." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

"That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers." -- Charles Chincholles

"That's a hell of an ambition, to be mellow. It's like wanting to be senile." -- Randy Newman

"That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude." -- Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr.

"That's the problem with tradition, it's always dated. -- Curt George Siffert

"The American people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard." -- Henry Louis Mencken

"The Bible doesn't forbid suicide. It's Catholic directive, intended to slow down their loss of martyrs." -- Ellen Blackstone

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried." -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." -- Friedrick Nietzsche

"The Earth is the cradle of human civilization, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin Tsiolkovskii

"The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it." -- James Agate

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry." -- Douglas Adams

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

"The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him." -- Jim Samuels

"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." -- Maugham

"The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray." -- Oscar Wilde

"The art of government is the organization of idolatry." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward." -- John Maynard Keynes

"The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame." -- Chuq Von Rospach

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror." -- Oscar Wilde

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." -- Joseph Conrad

"The believer is happy; the doubter is wise." -- Hungarian proverb

"The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education." -- Paul Karl Feyerabend

"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness." -- Eric Sevareid

"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality." -- Oscar Wilde

"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it." -- Doug Larson

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." -- Samuel Johnson

"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' taste." -- Pablo Picasso

"The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom." -- Cyril Parkinson

"The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped." -- Arthur Schopenhauer

"The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there." -- Edouard Manet

"The covers of this book are too far apart." -- Ambrose Bierce

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." -- Ellen Parr

"The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness." -- Max Eastman

"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority." -- Stanley Milgram

"The discipline of desire is the background of character." -- John Locke

"The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid." -- G. K. Chesterton

"The drug user drowns in the same pool mystics swim in." -- Joseph Campbell

"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them." -- William Clayton

"The education of a man is never completed until he dies." -- Robert Edward Lee

"The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience." -- unknown

"The extreme always seems to make an impression." -- _Heathers_

"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face." -- Jack Handy

"The faith that stands on authority is not faith." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The fantastic advances in the field of communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual." -- Earl Warren

"The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions." -- Maurice Chapelain

"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it." -- Abbie Hoffman

"The first thing to remember about Unix is that nothing is ever spelled correctly." -- Steve Lidie (lusol@lehigh.edu)

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level." -- Norman Mailer

"The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling." -- Ambrose Bierce

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance." -- Robert R. Coveyou

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." -- George Washington

"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." -- Lewis Thomas

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." -- William Osler

"The greater the number of laws, the greater the number of offenses against them." -- Havelock Ellis

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." -- Walter Bagehot

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." -- David Russell

"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." -- P. B. Medawar

"The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence used in democratic societies." -- R. A. Pinker

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists -- that is why they invented hell." -- Bertrand Russell

"The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr." -- Muhammad

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." -- Ralph W. Sockman

"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free." -- Henry David Thoreau

"The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular." -- Edward Gibbon

"The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still 'tis nonsense." -- Benjamin Franklin

"The life which is unexamined is not worth living." -- Plato

"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots." -- Rebecca West

"The man who does not read good books is at no advantage over the man that can't read them." -- Mark Twain

"The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides." -- Henri Fredric Amiel

"The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful." -- Mark Twain

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." -- Henry David Thoreau

"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay

"The melancholy truth was that his glorious golden head had nothing in it." -- Cecil Woodham Smith

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws." -- Cornelius Tacitus

"The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps." -- Benjamin Disraeli

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." -- Peter F. Drucker

"The most merciful thing in the world...is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft

"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums." -- Peter De Vries

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about." -- George Santayana

"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it." -- Samuel Johnson

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andres S. Tannenbaum

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." -- Henry Louis Mencken

"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions." -- Susan Sontag

"The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domesticated animal." -- Compton MacKenzie

"The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings to others." -- Doug Larson

"The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk." -- Oscar Wilde

"The only thing that separates us from the animals is superstition and mindless rituals." -- Daniel Klein

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." -- Niels Bohr

"The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment." -- Malcolm Muggeridge

"The passions are the only orators that always persuade." -- Francois La Rochefoucauld

"The passions often engender their contraries." -- Francois La Rochefoucauld

"The paths of glory at least lead to the grave, but the paths of duty may not get you anywhere." -- James Grover Thurber

"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." -- Frank Herbert

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." -- G. K. Chesterton

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Arthur Baldwin

"The probability is that tomorrow will not be an extrapolation of today." -- Ernest C. Arbuckle

"The problem with X is that it's overadequate." -- Dennis Ritchie

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." -- Elizabeth Taylor

"The progress toward totalitarianism arose, and keeps arising, because of society's refusal to be shit." -- Kathy Acker

"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself." -- Thomas Szasz

"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." -- Mark Twain

"The rain has such a friendly sound to one who's six feet underground." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"The real value of freedom is not to the minority that wants to talk, but to the majority, that does not want to listen." -- Zechariah Chafee

"The real world is not user-friendly." -- Kelvin Throop III

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good." -- Robert Graves

"The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting drunk." -- The Replacements.

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom." -- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas

"The right to revolt has sources deep in our history." -- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause." -- Mark Twain

"The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses." -- Francis Bacon

"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated." -- Henry David Thoreau

"The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation." -- George Bernard Shaw

"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they will believe they are as clever as he." -- Karl Kraus

"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime." -- Max Stirner

"The steady state of disks is full." -- Ken Thompson

"The stone age was marked by man's clever use of crude tools; the information age, to date, has been marked by man's crude use of clever tools." -- Anon.

"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone." -- Henrik Ibsen

"The superfluous is very necessary." -- Voltaire

"The test of tolerance comes when we are in a majority; the test of courage comes when we are in a minority." -- Ralph W. Stockman

"The thing about iron is that you generally don't have to think fast in dealing with it." -- Terry Pratchett, _Lords and Ladies_

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read." -- Abraham Lincoln

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." -- Bertrand Russell

"The trouble is that things *never* get better, they just stay the same, only more so." -- Terry Pratchett, _Eric_

"The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish." -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_

"The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to." -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." -- Terry Pratchett

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat." -- Jane Wagner

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy." -- Louis Kronenberger

"The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -- Harlan Ellison

"The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation." -- Oscar Wilde

"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands." -- Alexander Penney

"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood." -- Alexander Haig

"The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size..." -- Terry Pratchett

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois." -- Gustave Flaubert

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." -- Hemingway

"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." -- Horace Walpole

"The world is a very strange place, and the dice are always rolling." -- Tom Robbins, _Skinny Legs and All_

"The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." -- Sean O'Casey

"Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you." -- anonymous

"There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something." -- Thomas Alva Edison

"There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful." -- Samuel Johnson

"There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone." -- Gloria Steinem

"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them." -- Werner Karl Heisenberg

"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

"There are times when you have to choose between being a human and having good taste. " -- Bertolt Brecht

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." -- Alfred Korzybski

"There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other." -- La Rouchefoucauld

"There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion." -- Anatole France

"There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability." -- Marian Engel

"There is a great difference between not wishing to do evil and not knowing how." -- Seneca

"There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist." -- Ayn Rand

"There is hope, but not for us." -- Franz Kafka

"There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grapenuts on principle." -- G. K. Chesterton

"There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge." -- Bertrand Russell

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." -- Pablo Picasso

"There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it." Niven's Law #16

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." -- George Santayana

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." -- Francis Bacon

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear."

"There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom." -- Francis Bacon

"There is no law that vulgarity and literary excellence cannot coexist." -- A. Trevor Hodge

"There is no sin except for stupidity." -- Oscar Wilde

"There is no such thing as a functional illiterate." -- Kelvin Throop

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written, that is all." -- Oscar Wilde

"There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men." -- Epicurus

"There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith." -- William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment -- and nothing more corrupting." -- Alan John Percivale Taylor

"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result." -- Winston Churchill

"There is nothing outside the text." -- Jacques Derrida

"There is nothing permanent except change." -- Heraclitus

"There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure." -- Ross MacDonald

"There was never a genius without a tincture of madness." -- Aristotle

"There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over." -- Frank Vincent Zappa

"There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex." -- Billy Joel

"There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind." -- Marcel Proust

"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself." -- J. S. Bach

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." -- Edgar Allen Poe

"They're *grumble* stupid *cuss* *grumble*." -- Tanith

"This is *not* a football game, Netcom!" -- The Opry House

"This is Usenet. We're all masturbating in public places." -- Dawn

"This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of World War I. These aren't evil men -- some of them aren't even stupid." -- G. Dyer

"This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities." -- Bertrand Russell

"This is too perfect. It must be my date!"

"This time next year we'll be tanned muscle-bound aikido-master genius stud philosophers." -- A. M. Heublein

"Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled." -- William Blake

"Those who do not plan for the future will have to live through it anyway." -- Len Fisher

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"Thud. Thud. Thud. Splat." -- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, _Good Omens_

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." -- Hector Louis Berlioz

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Douglas Adams

"Time: a landing field! Death needs time like a junkie needs junk." -- William S. Burroughs

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

"To *you* I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." -- Woody Allen

"To be great is to be misunderstood." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state." -- Goethe

"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy." -- William Ralph Inge

"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die." -- Oscar Wilde

"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." -- George Santayana

"To describe the beating of Egg Whites is almost as cheeky as advising how to lead a happy life." -- The Joy of Cooking

"To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture." -- Anatole France

"To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To err is human; to forgive is simply not our policy." -- MIT Assassination Club

"To fall in love is awfully simple, but to fall out of love is simply awful." -- Bess Myerson

"To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be." -- Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo

"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood." -- George Santayana

"To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody." -- Quentin Crisp

"To live outside the law you must be honest." -- Bob Dylan

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." -- Oscar Wilde

"To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation." -- St. Augustine

"To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition." -- Albert Einstein

"To those who think that the law of gravity interferes with their freedom, there is nothing to say." -- Lionel Tiger

"Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL." -- Mae West

"Total chaos; that's what I like! Out of chaos comes reason. Out of reason, science." -- _God Told Me To_

"Touch my monkey, feed him Cool Whip." -- ghond

"Tourists are terrorists with cameras; terrorists are tourists with guns." -- Andrei Codresque

"Trapped, like a trap in a trap." -- Dorothy Parker

"Traveling there was really boring so I headed for the ditch. It was a rough ride but I met more interesting people there." -- Neil Young

"True friendship is never serene." -- Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

"True, money _can't_ buy happiness, but it isn't happiness I want. It's money." -- Bizarro

"Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence." -- Henrik Tikkanen

"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived." -- Oscar Wilde

"Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Try to keep things in perspective. Fifty years from now, kids in history classes will be yawning over what panics us today." -- Unknown

"Try to relax and enjoy the crisis." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." -- Alan Wilson Watts

"USENET is William Shatner and George Bush trading places after being hit by lightning." -- James 'Kibo' Parry

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked." -- Robert D. Sprecht

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Unemployment has gone from quantitative to qualitative." -- Alvin Toffler

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages." -- H.L. Mencken

"Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail." -- Ed Vielmetti

"Usenet is distributed network anarchy at its best -- or worst, depending on what is posted on any particular day." -- David Fiedler

"Usenet: a vast collection of people being polite to each other in the most creative possible ways!" -- James 'Kibo' Parry

"Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat." -- Fran Lebowitz

"Venture not to the utmost bounds of even lawful pleasure; the limits of good and evil join." -- Fuller

"Very deep. You should send that into Reader's Digest, they've got a page for people like you." -- Douglas Adams

"Violence isn't a solution to your problems; violence is a horse, of course, of course."

"Virtue has never been as respectable as money." -- Mark Twain

"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience." -- Adam Smith

"WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe." -- Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky

"Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." -- John F. Kennedy

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is the lie that makes us realize truth -- at least the truth that is given us to understand." -- Pablo Picasso

"We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school." -- Peter De Vries

"We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles." -- Mark Twain

"We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society." -- Miss Manners (Judith Martin)

"We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine." -- Eduardo Galeano

"We are all worms, but I believe I am a glowworm." -- Winston Churchill

"We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things." -- Marcel Proust

"We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal." -- Anatole France

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." -- Anais Nin

"We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them." -- Benjamin Ricketson Tucker

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a *part* of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a *part* of Europe." -- Dan Quayle

"We have art in order not to die of the truth." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see." -- Bishop Berkeley

"We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby." -- W. Somerset Maugham

"We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." -- Epitaph of two astronomers

"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience." -- George Bernard Shaw

"We made mad love, shadow love, random love, and abandoned love, Accidentally like a martyr..." -- Warren Zevon

"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition." -- Alexander Comfort

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?" -- Jean Cocteau

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." -- Edward R. Murrow

"We must remember the First Amendment, which protects any shrill jackass, no matter how self-seeking." -- F.G. Withington

"We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so." -- R. W. Dickson

"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look." -- Aldous Huxley

"We shape our buildings, and forever afterwards our buildings shape us." -- Winston Churchill

"We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in _Red Storm Rising_." -- Senator Dan Quayle

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." -- Albert Einstein

"We tend to idealize tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nut cases." -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me." -- Jack Handy

"We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of information science the most expensive asset is knowledge." -- Mikhail Gorbachev

"Well, to be fair I did have a couple of gadgets he probably didn't, like a teaspoon and an open mind." -- The Doctor

"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death." -- Dave Barry

"What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?" -- Richard Milhous Nixon

"What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook." -- Henry David Thoreau

"What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art." -- Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"What is it that makes a complete stranger dive into an icy river to save a solid gold baby? Maybe we'll never know." -- Jack Handy

"What is truth? Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I would keep to the truth and let God go." -- Johannes Eckhard

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell

"What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?" -- Evelyn Waugh

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler

"What makes resisting temptation difficult, for many people, is that they don't want to discourage it completely." -- Franklin P. Jones

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" -- Ursula K. Leguin

"What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch." -- Jane Wagner

"What's the difference between a Dice Clay concert and a Klan rally? Nothing. Trick question." -- Bob Goldthwait

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half is good... luckily, it's not difficult." -- Charlotte Whitton

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones." -- Peter De Vries

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." -- Desiderius Erasmus

"When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?" -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child... eventually." -- Steven Wright

"When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said, 'No, I made a few mistakes.'" -- Steven Wright

"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property." -- Thomas Jefferson

"When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation." -- Samuel Johnson

"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty." -- George Bernard Shaw

"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift

"When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right." -- Victor Marie Hugo

"When in doubt, go for the dick joke." -- Robin Williams

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." -- Benjamin Disraeli

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." -- Eric Hoffer

"When people have trouble communicating, the least they can do is to shut up." -- Tom Lehrer

"When solving a 'panic' you must first ask yourself what you were doing that could possibly frighten an operating system." -- Peter van der Linden

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers." -- Oscar Wilde

"When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror." -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods_

"When the next White House enemies list comes out, I want to be on it." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." -- Thomas Paine

"When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges. " -- Jack Handy

"When you're cool, the world is pouring mud up your nose."

"Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon." -- Dave Sim

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" -- Henry Ward Beecher

"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell

"Who will protect the public when the police violate the law?" -- Ramsey Clark

"Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student." -- George Iles

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." -- Francis Bacon

"Why do men go to war? Because women are watching." -- T. S. Eliot

"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words." -- Dorothy Parker

"Wit is educated insolence." -- Aristotle

"Wit is the epitaph of an emotion." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes respectable and changes its name." -- Charles Fort

"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy." -- Richard Linklater

"Without music life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Wobbler thought that California was where good people went when they died." -- Terry Pratchett, _Only You Can Save Mankind_

"Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity." -- Eric Hoffer

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -- Timothy Leary

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -- Rudyard Kipling

"Work and play are words to describe the same thing under different conditions." -- Mark Twain

"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world." -- Bob Black

"Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete." -- Raoul Vaneigem

"Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment." -- Arthur Gingold

"Worlds may freeze and suns may perish, but there stirs something within us now that can never die again." -- H. G. Wells

"Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." -- Timothy Leary

"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it." -- Wendell Berry

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you." -- Eric Hoffer

"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements." -- Norman Douglas

"You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them." -- Ursula K. LeGuin

"You can't expect a boy to be vicious until he has been to a good school." -- H. H. Munro (Saki)

"You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt." -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

"You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone." -- John Ciardi

"You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive." -- Margaret Thatcher

"You have all eternity to be cautious in when you're dead." -- Lois Platford

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." -- John Morley

"You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new." -- David Lee

"You never forget how to fuck. Unless you're really, _really_ stupid." -- Frank Zappa

"You never realize how short a month is until you pay alimony." -- John Barrymore

"You only live once, so live under as many false names as possible." -- Dana McManus

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do." -- Olin Miller

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'" -- George Bernard Shaw

"You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends." -- Joseph Conrad

"You shouldn't think about *how* we're doing this. You should ask yourself, 'why?'" -- Penn Jillette

"You slapped my face / Oh but so gently I smiled / At the caress" -- william carlos williams

"You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program." -- Alan J. Perlis

"You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race." -- George Bernard Shaw

"You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything." -- Donald E. Knuth

"You're doomed! You're SO doomed! I wouldn't have swallowed a Buick, and I wouldn't want to keep on eating!"

"You're infatuated with someone you love because they're SATAN."

"You're so vain, you probably think this song is about to engulf your planet!"

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play." -- Warren Beatty

"You, my boy, if you want to be a good pickpocket, need to learn how to tell a wallet from a maxipad." -- Jessica

"[David] Cronenberg is to Toronto as John Hughes is to Chicago." -- David Plant, Toronto Film Commissioner

"[The] Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life." -- Andrew Brown

"_Prospero's Books_ is the _Terminator 2_ for intellectuals." -- Peter Greenaway

"happy happy joy joy oh fuck" -- hugh

"usenet: it's not an obsession. it's just something I have to do ALL THE TIME." -- moxie@char.vnet.net

"well, it seems doable so we should do it. if we can't then we should get no biscuits." -- tim@meer.net

@v=(a,e,i,o,u,"y");for(@ARGV){y/A-Z/a-z/;$p++=$c=$s=0;for$l(split(//)){if(grep (/$l/,@v)&&!$s){$c++;$s++}else{$s=0}$p++}$c--if(/e$/);print"$_: $c\n"}

A day without sunshine is like night.

A good slogan can stop thought for fifty years. A great slogan can stop it forever.

A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.

A metaphor is like a simile.

A morning without coffee is like something without something else.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside. -- Ambrose Bierce

ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne. -- Ambrose Bierce

ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of another. -- Ambrose Bierce

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce

ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him. -- Ambrose Bierce

ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust. -- Ambrose Bierce

ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth. -- Ambrose Bierce

ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce

ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning. -- Ambrose Bierce

ADORE, v.t. To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce

ALONE, adj. In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. -- Ambrose Bierce

AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish. -- Ambrose Bierce

ANOINT, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. -- Ambrose Bierce

APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence. -- Ambrose Bierce

APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw. -- Ambrose Bierce

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record. -- Ambrose Bierce

ARREST, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness. -- Ambrose Bierce

ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit. -- Ambrose Bierce

All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.

Among animals, it's eat or be eaten. Among people it's define or be defined.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Anarchy -- it's not the law, it's just a good idea.

Anti-paranoia is that eerie feeling that nothing is connected to anything else.

Any slogan simple enough to fit in a .sig is too simple to do any good.

Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.

Anything you say will be distorted and remixed and used against you.

BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce

BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. -- Ambrose Bierce

BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen. -- Ambrose Bierce

Be good to your friends, or they may develop psychokinetic powers and destroy Tokyo.

Being weird isn't enough.

Boredom delenda est!

Brought to you by the people who made "out of context" a household word.

But I don't have an "any key" on my computer!

But this *is* the simplified version for the general public!

Bwah-hah-hah!

By God, for a moment there it all made sense...

CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries. -- Ambrose Bierce

CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones. -- Ambrose Bierce

CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him. -- Ambrose Bierce

COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles, but do not equal, our own. -- Ambrose Bierce

CONSULT, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided on. -- Ambrose Bierce

CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed. -- Ambrose Bierce

CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet. -- Ambrose Bierce

CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to meditate upon the vice of idleness. -- Ambrose Bierce

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -- Ambrose Bierce

CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce

Calm down -- it's only ones and zeroes.

Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world.

Cheer up -- if the economy collapses completely, you won't owe your student loan to *anybody*.

Coffee is my only REAL friend.

DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver. -- Ambrose Bierce

DEFAME, v.t. To lie about another. To tell the truth about another. -- Ambrose Bierce

DEFENSELESS, adj. Unable to attack. -- Ambrose Bierce

DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing. -- Ambrose Bierce

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country. -- Ambrose Bierce

DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another. -- Ambrose Bierce

DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors. -- Ambrose Bierce

DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude. -- Ambrose Bierce

DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command. -- Ambrose Bierce

DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire. -- Ambrose Bierce

Debate politics with a fern. If you lose, refuse to water it.

Delight and amaze me!

Democracy is the form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves.

Don't mock the insecure.

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. -- Ambrose Bierce

EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. -- Ambrose Bierce

ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull. -- Ambrose Bierce

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. -- Ambrose Bierce

Eloquence is logic on fire.

Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology. -- Blaauw's Law

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. -- Ambrose Bierce

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable. -- Ambrose Bierce

FELON, n. A person of greater enterprise than discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate attachment. -- Ambrose Bierce

FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit. -- Ambrose Bierce

FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity. -- Ambrose Bierce

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured. -- Ambrose Bierce

First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Go Lemmings Go!

Go not to Usenet for counsel, for it will say both no, and yes, and no, and yes....

Guns don't kill people; people kill people.

HABIT, n. A shackle for the free. -- Ambrose Bierce

HARBOR, n. A place where ships taking shelter from stores are exposed to the fury of the customs. -- Ambrose Bierce

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable. -- Ambrose Bierce

Hit any key to continue, or any other key to quit.

I don't care if I'm a lemming, I'm still not going.

I feed on the flesh of the living -- and I vote.

I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned him, and we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I helped skin Bob."

I like life -- it's something to do.

I like the idea of an ancient race -- it makes a world feel so...lived in.

I may look calm, but beneath this cool exterior is a churning iceberg ready to explode.

I think people tend to forget that trees are living creatures. They're sort of like dogs. Huge, quiet, motionless dogs, with bark instead of fur.

I used to get high on life, but I've built up a tolerance.

I'm killing time, wasting space, and going through a phase.

I'm not doing this *just* to be weird.

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMMODEST, adj. Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with a feeble conception of worth in others. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMPIETY, n. Your irreverence toward my deity. -- Ambrose Bierce

IMPUNITY, n. Wealth. -- Ambrose Bierce

If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly.

If it's not one thing, it's a BUNCH of things.

If we're so smart and so creative, why aren't we happier than they are?

If you chose to dance with a bear, don't stop when you get tired.

In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take.

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, "Let there be Light." And there was still nothing, but you could see it.

It is much harder to find a job than to keep one. -- Becker's Law

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

It's a control freak thing -- I won't *let* you understand.

It's a fine night to have an evening.

It's so elegant that it's wrong.

JAPANESE MINIMALISM: The most frequently offered interior design aesthetic used by rootless career-hopping young people. -- Douglas Coupland

JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. -- Ambrose Bierce

KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of. -- Ambrose Bierce

KNEE-JERK IRONY: The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation. -- Douglas Coupland

LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Ambrose Bierce

LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure. -- Ambrose Bierce

LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction. -- Ambrose Bierce

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law. -- Ambrose Bierce

LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree. -- Ambrose Bierce

LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. -- Ambrose Bierce

LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience. -- Ambrose Bierce

LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions. -- Ambrose Bierce

LOQUACITY, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk. -- Ambrose Bierce

LOW-BRED, adj. "Raised" instead of brought up. -- Ambrose Bierce

LUMINARY, n. One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it. -- Ambrose Bierce

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. -- Steven Wright

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

MACHINATION, n. The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing. -- Ambrose Bierce

MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York. -- Ambrose Bierce

MERCHANT, n. One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar. -- Ambrose Bierce

MESMERISM, n. Hypnotism before it wore good clothes, kept a carriage and asked Incredulity to dinner. -- Ambrose Bierce

METROPOLIS, n. A stronghold of provincialism. -- Ambrose Bierce

MILLENNIUM, n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be screwed down, with all reformers on the under side. -- Ambrose Bierce

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal. -- Ambrose Bierce

MISFORTUNE, n. The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Ambrose Bierce

MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government. -- Ambrose Bierce

MONDAY, n. In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. -- Ambrose Bierce

MORAL, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency. -- Ambrose Bierce

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Marching to a different kettle of fish.

Me not responsible. Me just pawn in game of life.

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Morris dancing is an exercise in fertility.

My life is not organized around high probability events.

My life may be strange, but at least it's not boring.

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party. -- Ambrose Bierce

NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi. -- Ambrose Bierce

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Never send a monster to do the work of an evil genius.

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury. -- Ambrose Bierce

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors. -- Ambrose Bierce

OMEN, n. A sign that something will happen if nothing happens. -- Ambrose Bierce

ONCE, adv. Enough. -- Ambrose Bierce

OPTION PARALYSIS: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none. -- Douglas Coupland

OVERWORK, n. A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing. -- Ambrose Bierce

OZMOSIS: The inability of one's job to live up to one's self-image. -- Douglas Coupland

Objectivity is in the eye of the beholder.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. -- Ambrose Bierce

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors. -- Ambrose Bierce

PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce

PENITENT, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment. -- Ambrose Bierce

PIETY, n. Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. -- Ambrose Bierce

PLAN, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result. -- Ambrose Bierce

PLEBISCITE, n. A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign. -- Ambrose Bierce

POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation. -- Ambrose Bierce

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce

PREDICAMENT, n. The wage of consistency. -- Ambrose Bierce

PREDILECTION, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion. -- Ambrose Bierce

PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood. -- Ambrose Bierce

PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support. -- Ambrose Bierce

PREROGATIVE, n. A sovereign's right to do wrong. -- Ambrose Bierce

PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it. -- Ambrose Bierce

PRUDE, n. A bawd hiding behind the back of her demeanor. -- Ambrose Bierce

PUBLISH, n. In literary affairs, to become the fundamental element in a cone of critics. -- Ambrose Bierce

PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull. -- Ambrose Bierce

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.

Proof by accumulated evidence: Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.

Proof by eminent authority: I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete.

Proof by funding: How could three different government agencies be wrong?

Proof by importance: A large body of useful consequences all follow from the proposition in question.

Proof by intimidation: Trivial.

Proof by omission: The reader may easily supply the details. The other 253 cases are analogous.

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not. -- Ambrose Bierce

QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. -- Ambrose Bierce

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day. -- Ambrose Bierce

RADIUM, n. A mineral that gives off heat and stimulates the organ that a scientist is a fool with. -- Ambrose Bierce

RANSOM, n. The purchase of that which neither belongs to the seller, nor can belong to the buyer. The most unprofitable of investments. -- Ambrose Bierce

RASCAL, n. A fool considered under another aspect. -- Ambrose Bierce

RASH, adj. Insensible to the value of our advice. -- Ambrose Bierce

RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection. -- Ambrose Bierce

REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice. -- Ambrose Bierce

REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire. -- Ambrose Bierce

REASONABLE, adj. Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion. -- Ambrose Bierce

REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it. -- Ambrose Bierce

RECOLLECT, v. To recall with additions something not previously known. -- Ambrose Bierce

RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead. -- Ambrose Bierce

RECONSIDER, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made. -- Ambrose Bierce

RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded. -- Ambrose Bierce

REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce

REFORM, v. A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation. -- Ambrose Bierce

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. -- Ambrose Bierce

RESIGN, v.t. To renounce an honor for an advantage. To renounce an advantage for a greater advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve. -- Ambrose Bierce

RESPECTABILITY, n. The offspring of a _liaison_ between a bald head and a bank account. -- Ambrose Bierce

REVERENCE, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man. -- Ambrose Bierce

RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character. -- Ambrose Bierce

Red meat is _not_ bad for you. Now blue-green meat, *that's* bad for you!

Remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. -- Ambrose Bierce

SCRIBBLER, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own. -- Ambrose Bierce

SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. -- Ambrose Bierce

SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. -- Ambrose Bierce

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors. -- Ambrose Bierce

Shouldn't there be a shorter word for monosyllabic?

Sleep deprivation is fun -- you see such pretty colors.

Sleep is for wimps. Happy, healthy, well-rested wimps, but wimps nonetheless.

TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. -- Ambrose Bierce

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

The Earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much, heavier.

The map is not the territory, but you can't fold up the territory and put it in your glove compartment.

The street finds its own uses for technology; the net finds its own uses for garbage.

This slogan is programming you in ways that may not be apparent for months, or even years.

Thou shalt eat green eggs and ham -- obey thy God, I-am-that-I-am.

UN-AMERICAN, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish. -- Ambrose Bierce

UNIVERSALIST, n. One who forgoes the advantage of a Hell for persons of another faith. -- Ambrose Bierce

Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read. -- Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions. -- Ambrose Bierce

VITUPERATION, n. Saite, as understood by dunces and all such as suffer from an impediment in their wit. -- Ambrose Bierce

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. -- Ambrose Bierce

WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out. -- Ambrose Bierce

WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke." -- Ambrose Bierce

What if no one ever asked a hypothetical question?

What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -- not the facts themselves. -- Cohen's Law

When you are not looking at it, this .sig is in Cymrec.

Where am I going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

You know my motto: Forgive and uh... the other thing.

You'll go to Heck if you don't believe in Gosh.

ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. -- Ambrose Bierce