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Just some random quotes I found on the Internet and thought worth keeping. I've tried to attribute them to source wherever possible, but some I just don't know about.


There is hardly a thing in the world that some man can not make a little worse and sell a little cheaper

Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. -- T.S. Eliot, "The Family Reunion"

Microsoft Windows: Proof that P.T. Barnum was correct.
-- from Denny Miller's .sig
 
-rw-rw-rw- : the file permission of the beast
 
An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt.
--anonymous

It's not the Information Superhighway, but the Information Sewer System: Every nitwit with a toilet flushing the most unimaginable garbage upon us.
 

 

Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

 

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
-- Knuth

There is one terrifying word in the world of nuclear physics.....Oops.

 

Program (Pro'-gram) n. A magic spell cast over a computer, causing it to turn one's input into error messages.
 
Masochists are people who have pain confused with pleasure. In a society which has television confused with entertainment, Doritos confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed up than the rest of us."
-- P.J. O'Rourke

 

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject
-- Winston Churchill

 

X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot.
-- Brad Littlejohn

 

Conversation, n.:
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener. -- Brad Littlejohn

 

Most of the people I know are more critical of their own faults. Especially when they find them in other people.
-- Seth

 

If two men agree on everything, you can be sure one of them is doing the thinking.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson

 

Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
-- Unknown
 
de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.
Three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner -- Bill Gunshannon, [email protected]

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's a whole bunch of conformists who have just decided that the nonconformist's behavior, apparel, or decoration are worthy of imitation. (apologies to Bill Vaughan)

The longer a man is wrong, the surer he is that he's right.
 
The best way to get information on Usenet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong information.
-- [email protected] (Aahz)

 

The government which fears arms in the hands of its people...should.
 
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
--e. e. cummings

 

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw

 

Pascal, n.:
A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it.

 

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

 

Users, like hard disks, fall into two categories: those that have massively screwed up, and those that will.
--Ben Yalow

 

Code fast, crash young, and leave a pretty core
-- Robert Cohen

 

A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45
-- Mike Beebe

 

I'd like to buy him for what I think he is worth, and sell him for what he thinks he is worth.
-- [email protected]

 

A pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many Optimists.
-- Unknown

 

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

 

A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Teacher, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Student turned the machine on. The machine worked.
--Unknown

Humans...God's attempt to pass the Turing test.
-- Maya

 

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
--Mark Twain

 

Diplomacy: The art of saying "Nice Doggy" while searching for a rock
-- Paul Austin

 

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

 

But when you borrow from everybody, it's "research".
--Charlie Luce (paraphrasing R. A. Heinlein)

 

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

 

"(F)rames can add something to a page, primarily annoyance..."
-- Were-Mutt

 

Make no laws whatever concerning speech and, speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license;" and they will define and define freedom out of existence.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre (1866-1912)

 

If you're happy and you know it, clank your chains!

 

 

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
-- Mitch Ratcliffe

 

Real Life? What's that? Oh yeah, the annoying time between computer crashes.
-- Steven Stephens

 

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec

 

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth

Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
 
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 percent of them are wrong.
--H.L. Mencken

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
--H.L. Mencken

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

 

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

The weak conform, the strong survive

Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some people wonder, 'What happened?'

 

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. :-)
--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

 

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
--Buddha

 

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
--Voltaire

 

In young scientific fields, if you say all the accepted positions are wrong, you'll seldom be wrong.
--J. Ostriker

 

When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to reform.
--Mark Twain

I'm going to live forever, or die trying.

Engineers think that equations approximate the real world.
Scientists think that the real world approximates equations.
Mathematicians are unable to make the connection.

It is not a sign of weakness to ask for guidance; nor is it a crime to be uninformed, but to choose the path of ignorance is unforgivable.

To an optimist, it's half full.
To a pessimist, it's half empty.
To an engineer, it's twice as big as necessary...

If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.
--John F. Kennedy

 

Our earth is degenerate these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common.
--Inscription, 4800 year-old tablet (quoted in Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts)

 

We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control.
--Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb (quoted in R.Buckminster Fuller's I Seem to be a Verb)

 

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
--Ghandi

 

The point to remember is that what the government gives, it must first take away.
--John S. Coleman

 

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

 

A man is as old as the woman he feels.
--Groucho Marx

 

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
--Voltaire

 

The sun, the moon, and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of human hands.
--Havelock Ellis

 

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
--George Eliot

 

Never just complain. Exchange, listen, inform, work toward solutions. Choose your battles carefully and realistically and take action.
--Grey Watson

 

Outlawing cryptography is like outlawing pencils because bookies use them to record bets.
--John Perry Barlow, EFF-Austin Cryptography Conference (October 1993)

 

The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots
--P. Ginsparg

 

.. the Twentieth Century, the innovative century that brought you WW I, WW II, and WWW.
--Bill Higgins .sig

 

Stop tolerating in your leaders what you would not tolerate in your friends.
--Michael Ventura

 

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
--Howard Aiken

 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

Traditional human government consists of thieves and murderers. By adopting the electoral process, we have weeded out the murderers. This is actually about as good as it gets.
 
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

 

H. L. Mencken's Law:

Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:

Those who cannot teach -- administrate.

Miavir's Extension:

Those who cannot administrate -- criticize.

Kai's Addendum:

Those who cannot do anything -- become politicians.

-- From Tony Gale <[email protected]> 's .signature:

The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock.

Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling everything.

 

-- Karl Lehenbauer

 

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack

Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.

Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

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                      __
                     / /    __  _  _  _  _ __  __
                    / /__  / / / \// //_// \ \/ /           -o)
                   /____/ /_/ /_/\/ /___/  /_/\_\           /\\
                   is lika a WIGWAM:                       _\_v-
      No gates, no windows, and an Apache inside.

Misc

=============================================================
==== a mail server message just too good to go unnoticed ====
=============================================================

Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 14:33:07 +0200
From: Mail Administrator <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Mail System Error - Returned Mail

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:

The user(s) account is temporarily over quota.

<[email protected]>

Please reply to [email protected]
if you feel this message to be in error.



Etc

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Quotes

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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

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The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: March, 12, 2019