Monday, January 1, 2001

Quotes Archive

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"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." ~ Samuel Johnson
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"Always do right-this will gratify some and astonish the rest." ~ Mark Twain
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"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." ~ Will Rogers
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"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted." ~ Randy Pausch
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"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is." ~ CS Lewis
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Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. ~ H. Jackson Brown
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The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. ~ H H Humphrey
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The bridge between mediocrity and art is passion. ~ Annalea
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"Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their
fruits." ~ Eleanor of Aquitaine
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"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." ~Albert Einstein
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If there is something you don't like, don't like it with some literate skill. ~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
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Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. -- Oscar Wilde
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I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work. --Thomas Edison
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The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite propagandists). --Tolkien
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Government: Causing More Violence than it Prevents Since 10,000 B.C.
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I used to think life was unfair. Then I realized that if life WERE fair, I would deserve everything I got. Now I take great pleasure in the general unfairness of the Universe. --Unknown
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"Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly." ~ Julie Andrews
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"Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world of full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are overwhelmingly powerful." --Calvin Coolidge
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Never wrestle with a pig---you get all muddy and the pig has a good time. --American Proverb
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Marriage is a 7,000 piece puzzle titled "Blue Sky". --Unknown
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"If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun." --Hobbes (Calvin's Tiger)
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"It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things money can't buy." --George Lorimer
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"If ignorance is bliss, school is a deliberate attempt on its part to deprive me of happiness, the pursuit of which is my unalienable right according to the declaration of independence. I therefore assert my patriotic prerogative not to know the material at hand. " --Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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"If I was two faced, do you think I'd be wearing this one?" --Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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"All true wisdom is found on t-shirts." --Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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"The surest sign that there is intelligent life out there is that they haven't tried to contact us yet." --Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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"God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things, Right now I am so far behind I will never die." --Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
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"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
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"But what ... is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,1977.
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"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
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"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message
sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
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"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must
be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
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"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
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"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."
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"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy
cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
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"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
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"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
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"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of
examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post- It" Notepads.
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"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your
parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay
our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard,
and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet." -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
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"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
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"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It
can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as
an unalterable condition of weight training." -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
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"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
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"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
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"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
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"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction" -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.
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"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and
humane surgeon" -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
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God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die.
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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I try to make everyones life a little more surreal.
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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It's not denial... I'm just very selective about the reality I accept.
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little pratice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)
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Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It's a beautiful world all right.
-Calvin's Dad (Bill Watterson)
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If it can kill you, it can probably get you high.
-Robert Campbell
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You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
-Albert Camus
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You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
-Al Capone
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Nobody controls his own life. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, By people who love you.
-Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game"
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May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
-George Carlin
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Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
-George Carlin
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A fine line separates psychotic people from sick people, a psychotic person will kill 12 people with a 10 inch steel dildo, a sick person will kill 12 people with a 10 inch steel dildo, however, he'd be wearing a bunny suit at the time.
-George Carlin
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I may be a jerk, but I'm still sensitive.
-Liz Carroll
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The trouble with radicals is that they read only radical literature and the trouble with conservatives is that they don't read anything.
-Thomas Carter
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As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-Matt Cartmill
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Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day to day living that wears you out.
-Anton Chekhov
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An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Love and Genius are two of the most over-used words in the language.
-Hank Chinaski, "Hollywood"
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May you live in interesting times.
-traditional Chinese curse
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May your fondest wish be granted.
-traditional Chinese curse
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It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
-Winston Churchill
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-Winston Churchill
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History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
-Winston Churchill
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Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
-Winston Churchill
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Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never.
-Winston Churchill
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The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
-Arthur C. Clarke
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America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
-Georges Clemenceau
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For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
-R. Clopton
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If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
-Confucius
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Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.
-William Congreve
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It's just like having a big sister. Only not cool.
-Meredith Connelly
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If Peter Parker doesn't go grocery shopping, Spiderman goes hungry.
-TJ Connelly, on superhero complexes
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I love having both sides of my brain in the room to talk to.
-TJ Connelly
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I'm running a LAN on hardware older than your sister. Fear me.
-TJ Connelly
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I hate this business. If I didn't hate getting up in the morning more, I'd chuck it all in and get a proper job tomorrow.
-John Constantine
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That which does not kill us makes us hungry.
-Lord Corun
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The world revolves around the sun, not your head.
-Copernicus
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I'd hate to think we're seriously hampering the productivity of America. But, on the other hand, what the heck!
-Les Crane, computer game magnate, in "Time"
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The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas Instruments.
-from "The Creation of the Universe" on PBS
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If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
-Robert Cringely
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Women. Fear them.
-Andrew Crown
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To be nobody-but-myself---in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else---means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
-E. E. Cummings
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When was the last time you saw a tombstone with SAT scores inscribed on it?
-Edward B. Fiske
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My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.  -Margaret Mead
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“I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I've been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.”
-Winston Churchill
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“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”
-George Bernard Shaw