%
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning "can't
install Debian".

        -- Mark Pilgrim
%
When you choose the behavior, you choose the
consequences.

        -- Dr. Phil McGraw
%
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of
speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut
it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the
active.

V. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word
or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday
English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
outright barbarous.

        -- George Orwell
%
Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know,
why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes
and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to
hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm
going to have a hell of a good time in the process
of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking
babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the
thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that
is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is,
is we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of
that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or
they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know,
we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to
dance at all anymore.

         -- Kurt Vonnegut
%
We were sitting around one night... who else was 
there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and
Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a
penny a word, and had been for years. And he said
"This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get
money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody
said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're
always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become
Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says,
"I'm going to do it."

        -- Harlan Ellison
%
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right;
and if wrong, to be set right.

        -- Carl Schurz
%
I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing
something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that
I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself,
"Dijkstra would not have liked this", well that would
be enough immortality for me.

        -- Edsger Dijkstra
%
Work like no one is watching.  Dance like you've
been hurt.  Love like you need the money.
%
No, I ain't got a fax machine!  I also ain't got an
Apple IIc, polio, or a falcon.

        -- Ray Smuckles, in Chris Onstad's "Achewood"
           November 22, 2006
%
Methods of extracting information which are not
countenanced by the laws of war and the customs of
humanity cannot be tolerated.  Such acts tend to
produce only false information and are degrading to
the person inflicting them.

        -- Small Wars Manual
           United States Marine Corps, 1940
%
I wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled "An
Account of the new-invented Pennsylvania Fireplaces;
wherein their Construction and Manner of Operation is
particularly explained; their Advantages above every
other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all
Objections that have been raised against the Use of
them answered and obviated," etc. This pamphlet had
a good effect. Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the
construction of this stove, as described in it, that
he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending
of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from
a principle which has ever weighed with me on such
occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages
from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an
opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously.

        -- Benjamin Franklin
%
A process cannot be understood by stopping
it. Understanding must move with the flow of the
process, must join it and flow with it.

        -- Frank Herbert, Dune
%
Imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color
of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself,
in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts
of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats
constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes
them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals and can
only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and
infantile desire by changing channels on a universal
remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

        -- William Gibson
%
The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to
be terrorized.

        -- Bruce Schneier
%
A complex system that works is invariably found to
have evolved from a simple system that worked. A
complex system designed from scratch never works and
cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to
start over with a working simple system.

        -- John Gall
%
There needs to be some kind of antitrust law or
garbage collector that periodically comes along and
randomizes Whuffie if you're going to get anything
like a merit-based distribution.

        -- Cory Doctorow 
%
If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you
can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic
pixie dust of "open source," and have everything
magically work out. Software is hard.

        -- Jamie Zawinski
%
People, ideas, and hardware. In that order!

        -- Col. John Boyd, USAF
%
The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what
remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them in
from the public eye and use in consigning them to the
waste of time, but by such multiplication of copies
as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Dianetics is not in any way covered by legislation
anywhere, for no law can prevent one man sitting
down and telling another man his troubles, and if
anyone wants a monopoly on dianetics, be assured
that he wants it for reasons which have to do not
with dianetics but with profit.

        -- L. Ron Hubbard
           Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
%
Enron stock was rated as "Can't Miss" until
it became clear that the company was in desperate
trouble, at which point analysts lowered the rating to
"Sure Thing." Only when Enron went completely under
did a few bold analysts demote its stock to the lowest
possible Wall Street analyst rating, "Hot Buy."

        -- Dave Barry
%
My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when
I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he
batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was
never to use that term in his presence again, that
if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The
obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely
my own, and people who didn't know that were childish
people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to
be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever,
and here and there over the years I was able to pass
on the lesson to some remarkable student.

        -- John Taylor Gatto
%
The dogs have it right. Customers want to take a
good long whiff. But companies so lobotomized that
they can't speak in a recognizably human voice build
sites that smell like death.

        -- David Weinberger
%
The more facts you tell, the more you sell.
An advertisment's chance for success invariably
increases as the number of pertinent merchandise
facts included in the advertisement increases.

        -- Dr. Charles Edwards, as quoted in
           David Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man"
%
Earth to Computer Industry: Commodities are Good Things.

        -- Doc Searls
%
Anyone can make the Internet a better place to live,
work and raise up kids. It takes a real blockhead
with a will of iron to make it worse.

        -- Doc Searls and David Weinberger
           "World of Ends"
%
Elise Shapiro's Law of Communication: The more methods
people have for getting in touch with them, the more
difficult they are to reach.
%
It's patently ridiculous to write morals out of the
equation entirely. Something important in public
debate dies when the idea of an ethical response to
a situation is considered illogical and distasteful.

        -- Mister Bad
%        
A good programming language should have features that
make the kind of people who use the phrase "software
engineering" shake their heads disapprovingly.

        -- Paul Graham
%
The phrase "object-oriented" means a lot of
things. Half are obvious, and the other half are
mistakes.

        -- Paul Graham
%
When I say business can learn from open source, I
don't mean any specific business can. I mean business
can learn about new conditions the same way a gene
pool does. I'm not claiming companies can get smarter,
just that dumb ones will die.

        -- Paul Graham
%
Never anger a bard, for your name sounds funny and
scans to many popular songs.

        -- Stephen Savitzky
%
If we are ever to design the Robot Masters that will
ultimately wrest the planet from human control,
we must first wrest the computing community from
C's control.

        -- Miles Nordin
%
I am have been a working film director (REPO MAN,
WALKER, etc) for twenty-odd years, and copyright
law has never worked in my favour - only in the
favour of massive corporations such as Universal /
Vivendi, which seize even the "so-called inalienable
rights of authors." Patent and copyright laws are a
fraud perpetrated by corporations and governments
against the actual producers of creative work.
The independent filmmaker's rule of thumb is always,
if Jack Valenti's in favour of it, I'm against it.

        -- Alex Cox
%
For more than two years, it has been apparent in
the IBM Company that we were behind in the large
scientific area. This is an area where, since the
days of our Harvard machine, we have attempted to
lead. Although four or five years ago there was some
doubt as to whether or not we should continue to try
to lead in this area because of the expense and other
considerations, at some point between two and three
years ago it became evident that the fallout from the
building of such large-scale machines was so great
as to justify their continuance at almost any cost.

        -- T.J. Watson, Jr.
           May 17, 1965
%
Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.

        -- Representative Robert Goodloe Harper
           June 18, 1798
%
As long as there is a lower class I am in it, as
long as there is a criminal element I am of it,
as long as there is a soul in prison I am not free.

        -- Eugene V. Debs
%
In 1968, the Communications of the ACM published
a text of mine under the title "The goto statement
considered harmful", which in later years would be
most frequently referenced, regrettably, however,
often by authors who had seen no more of it than
its title, which became a cornerstone of my fame
by becoming a template: we would see all sorts of
articles under the title "X considered harmful"
for almost any X, including one titled "Dijkstra
considered harmful". But what had happened? I had
submitted a paper under the title "A case against
the goto statement", which, in order to speed up its
publication, the editor had changed into a "letter
to the Editor", and in the process he had given it
a new title of his own invention! The editor was
Niklaus Wirth.

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
The tools we use have a profound (and
devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and,
therefore, on our thinking abilities.

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally
good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital
asset of a competent programmer.

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. 

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Program testing can be a very effective way to show
the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate
for showing their absence.

        -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
The difference between "hostile" executables (such as
viruses) and others is academic, when a root-account
user can already shoot off his foot or other vital
parts, with one of myriad, brief commands. Put the
other way, the same survival skills by which you, as
a novice sysadmin, will cease destroying your system
directly will also, more generally, dissuade you from
doing unwise things as root, thereby incidentally
keeping viruses and their kin off your system.

        -- Rick Moen
%
FRANCE SIGNS PEACE TREATY: WE'RE IN THE FINALS!

        -- sign at a London newsstand, 1940
%
Long-term investments are only entered into by the
government and crazed fanatics.

        -- Hans Reiser
%
One of the best ways to teach people not to rebel is 
to offer plenty of ruts for fake rebellion.

        -- Norman Solomon
           The Trouble with Dilbert
%
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy
of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to
challenge our government to a trial of strength and
bid defiance to the laws of the country.

        -- Thomas Jefferson, 1814
%
From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and
their tenaciousness of their money, it will be more
easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates
into reason, than money to bribe them.

        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
The Copyright Clause and the First Amendment seek
related objectives--the creation and dissemination of
information.  When working in tandem, these provisions
mutually reinforce each other, the first serving as an
"engine of free expression," Harper & Row, Publishers,
Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U. S. 539, 558 (1985),
the second assuring that government throws up no
obstacle to its dissemination.   At the same time,
a particular statute that exceeds proper Copyright
Clause bounds may set Clause and Amendment at
cross-purposes, thereby depriving the public of the
speech-related benefits that the Founders, through
both, have promised.

       --  Justice Stephen Breyer
           Dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 2003
%
People who have them call 'em "ethics". People who
don't call it "dogma."

        -- Mr. Bad
%
Never hire your friends. I have made this mistake
three times and had to fire all three. They are no
longer my friends.

        -- David Ogilvy
           Ogilvy on Advertising
%
A computer is a state machine. Threads are for people
who can't program state machines.

         -- Alan Cox
%
It's important that the Web should be independent
of quality of information. I don't want it to be
somewhere where you would publish technical reports
only after you had finished.

        -- Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
%
The idealism required to conceive of, and use, a
simple second language for all people on earth is
probably much healthier personally than the cynicism
required to ignore it.

        -- Mr. Bad
%
On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any
hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow
from it.  Universal conceptions, as things to
take account of, may be as real for pragmatism as
particular sensations are.  They have, indeed, no
meaning and no reality if they have no use.  But if
they have any use they have that amount of meaning.
And the meaning will be true if the use squares well
with life's other uses.

       -- William James, "Pragmatism" 
%
Whatever universe a professor believes in must at
any rate be a universe that lends itself to lenghty
discourse.  A universe definable in two sentences is
something for which the professorial intellect has
no use.

        -- William James, "Pragmatism"
%
We think of ourselves as so fucking original, but
we're like ants. Just a strand of fucking ants.

        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
I am concerned that the proposed legislation responds
only to a loud cry for assistance and is not the
reasoned and practiced position of our multinational
corporations.

        -- Dr. Dorothy E. Denning
%
As a private person, I have a passion for landscape,
and I have never seen one which was improved by a
billboard.  Where every prospect pleases, man is at
his vilest when he erects a billboard.  When I retire
from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret
society of masked vigilantes who will travel about
the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down
posters at the dark of the moon.  How many juries
will convict us when we are caught in these acts of
beneficient citizenship?

        -- David Ogilvy, 
           Confessions of an Advertising Man
%
Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true
place for a just man is also a prison.

        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
%
I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into
a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as
I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or
three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot
thick, and the iron grating which strained the light,
I could not help being struck with the foolishness of
that institution which treated me as if I were mere
flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered
that it should have concluded at length that this
was the best use it could put me to, and had never
thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I
saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and
my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to
climb or break through before they could get to be as
free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined,
and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and
mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had
paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat
me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In
every threat and in every compliment there was a
blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was
to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could
not but smile to see how industriously they locked
the door on my meditations, which followed them out
again without let or hindrance, and they were really
all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me,
they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys,
if they cannot come at some person against whom
they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that
the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a
lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did
not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all
my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

%
Let every man make known what kind of government would
command his respect, and that will be one step toward
obtaining it.

        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
%
To prevail, you must have the courage to say,
"My program will have liberty, or never be born."

        -- Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU GPL
%
The future masters of technology will have to be
lighthearted and intelligent.  The machine easily
masters the grim and the dumb.

        -- Marshall McLuhan, 1969
%
"You can't be on the net and _not_ be on the net," Chia
said, as they shot up a final flight of stairs.
"Distributed processing," he said.  "Interstitial.  It 
began with a shared killfile--"
        -- William Gibson, _Idoru_, 1996. p. 209
% 
First, we want to establish the idea that a computer
language is not just a way of getting a computer
to perform operations but rather that it is a
novel formal medium for expressing ideas about
methodology. Thus, programs must be written for
people to read, and only incidentally for machines
to execute.

        -- Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman 
           with Julie Sussman,
           Structure and Interpretation of Computer 
           Programs
%
Think about why firewalls succeeded in the
marketplace. It's not because they're effective;
most firewalls are installed so poorly as not to
be effective, and there are many more effective
security products that have never seen widespread
deployment. Firewalls are ubiquitous because
auditors started demanding firewalls. This changed
the cost equation for businesses. The cost of adding a
firewall was expense and user annoyance, but the cost
of not having a firewall was failing an audit. And
even worse, a company without a firewall could be
accused of not following industry best practices
in a lawsuit. The result: everyone has a firewall,
whether it does any good or not.

        -- Bruce Schneier
%
There is no web site that has a UI that comes close
to the lamest newsreader in the world....they don't
even let you do basic things like "don't show me
messages I've already read".  It's a continual
source of amazement to me (though it shouldn't be)
what people will settle for.

        -- Jamie Zawinski
%
American society is boring. It's too predictable what
will happen tomorrow.

        -- Dmitry Sklyarov
%
There is nothing so permanent as temporary when it 
works.
        -- Jim Edmondson (WA7KQG)
%
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate
agitation want crops without plowing up the ground,
they want rain without thunder and lightning. They
want the ocean without the awful roar of its many
waters.

        -- Fredrick Douglass, 1857
%
Information gladly given but safety requires avoiding
unnecessary conversation.

        -- San Francisco Municipal Railway
%
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in
the first place.  Therefore, if you write the code
as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition,
not smart enough to debug it.

        -- Brian Kernighan
%
If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd be running
around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening
to repetitive music.

        -- Marcus Brigstocke 
           (not "Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, 1989.")
%
The copyright statute does not empower copyright
holders to override the fair use right by overbroad
copyright notices or other unilaterally imposed
provisions.

        -- University System of Georgia,
           Regents Guide to Understanding
           Copyright and Educational Fair Use
%
Librarians should be as aggressive in protecting the
right of fair use as the publishers are in seeking
to destroy it.

        -- Prof. L. Ray Patterson, University of Georgia
%
As for us regular people: love, peace, happiness. Pick
one.

        -- Numair Faraz
%
A new competitor seemed to emerge out of the woodwork
every month or so. The first thing I would do,
after checking to see if they had a live online demo,
was look at their job listings. After a couple years
of this I could tell which companies to worry about
and which not to.  The more of an IT flavor the job
descriptions had, the less dangerous the company
was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle
experience. You never had to worry about those. You
were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java
developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers,
that would be a bit frightening--that's starting
to sound like a company where the technical side,
at least, is run by real hackers. If I had ever seen
a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have
been really worried.

        -- Paul Graham, co-founder, Viaweb
%
Engaged in the politics necessary to wire the world,
I encounter many people in positions of influence
and visibility -- politicians, corporate leaders,
scientists, engineers, writers, academics -- who are
motivated by the same mystical drive that propels
me. They are acidheads, but nearly all of them are
afraid to admit it. It's although the world were
being created by a secret cult. And even though it's
my secret cult, I'm not crazy about secrecy or cults,
and I'm certainly not keen on having them design the
rest of society.

        -- John Perry Barlow
           in Tripping, Charles Hayes, ed.
%
Act like a dumbshit and they'll treat you as an equal.
        -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
%
Too much is always better than not enough.
        -- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
%
Henry, what are you doing in there?
        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
    
Ralph, what are you doing out there?
        -- Henry David Thoreau
%
If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow
arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no
rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack
him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not
expected. These military devices, leading to victory,
must not be divulged beforehand.

        -- Sun Tzu
           The Art of War
%
To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles
is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without
fighting is the acme of skill.

        -- Sun Tzu
           The Art of War
%
To be certain to take what you attack is to attack
a place the enemy does not or cannot protect. To be
certain to hold what you defend is to defend a place
the enemy dares not or is not able to attack.

        -- Sun Tzu
           The Art of War
%
What is valued in war is victory, not prolonged 
operations.

        -- Sun Tzu
           The Art of War
%
He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will
be victorious.

        -- Sun Tzu
           The Art of War
%

The true  measure of a  man is how he treats  someone
who can  do him absolutely no good.

        -- Dr. Samuel Johnson
%
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

        -- Dr. Samuel Johnson
%
Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper 
than we possess ourselves.

        -- Gandalf
           in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
%
It is not our part to master all the tides of the
world, but to do what is in us for the succour of
those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil
in the fields that we know, so that those who live
after may have clean earth to till. What weather they
shall have is not ours to rule.

        -- Gandalf
           in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
%
No haiku patents
Means I've no incentive to
%
If we block web ads
Zinc.  The other white metal.
Haiku ads come next.

Without haiku ads
Haiku as we know it, gone.
Zinc. The one you love.
%
FREEZE!  List Police!
%
The world needs less software.

        -- Brian Behlendorf
%
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit
upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin
slitting throats.

        -- Henry Louis Mencken 
%
Hell is other people's Perl.
%
Le concept de logiciel libre signifie que n'importe
quel utilisateur est libre de modifier le programme,
de diffuser des copies du programme, et de distribuer
des versions modifiées et améliorées du programme. Le
logiciel libre est une déclaration éthique. Il
respecte les droits de l'homme qui sont plus
importants que l'économie.

        -- Richard M. Stallman
%
My grandparents went to a planet with no bilateral
symmetry, and all I got was this lousy F-shirt.
%
All the best people in life seem to like Linux.
        -- Steve Wozniak
%
In a world where speech depends on software, free
speech depends on free software.
%
Any setuid root program that does an exec() somewhere
is just a less user friendly version of su.

        -- Olaf Kirch
%
It's not pedantry if you're wrong.

        -- Bryan Fullerton
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it
correct, not tried it.

        -- Donald E. Knuth
%
After the meeting, my friends told me they had
wanted to say such a thing but were afraid of
reprisals! Why? Certainly nothing happened to me
as a result. They seem to have learned the habit
of cowering before authority even when not actually
threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided
not to learn this particular lesson.

        -- Richard M. Stallman
%
Writing non-free software is not an ethically
legitimate activity, so if people who do this run
into trouble, that's good!  All businesses based
on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner
the better.

        -- Richard M. Stallman
%
I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to
control whether people are allowed to use it,
or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is
sabotage. It is an activity that benefits the person
that does it at the cost of impoverishing all of
society. One person gains one dollar by destroying
two dollars' worth of wealth. I think a person with
a conscience wouldn't do that sort of thing except
perhaps if he would otherwise die.

        -- Richard M. Stallman
%
I am the great Faviconico!
%
If anybody here is in marketing or advertising, kill
yourself. There's no rationalisation for what you do,
and you are Satan's little helpers.

        -- Bill Hicks
%
Consumers are distressingly, disappointingly obtuse
when it comes to their own personal privacy.

        -- Esther Dyson
%
She done me wrong,
But at least she done me.

        -- Red Elvises, "Sad Cowboy Song"
%
If you wrap the Internet around every person on
the planet and spin the planet, software flows in
the network.

         -- Eben Moglen, Moglen's Metaphorical Corollary to Faraday's Law 
%
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to
be happy.

         -- Benjamin Franklin
%
When you use some wickedly cool and obscure feature
of the language, you reduce the number of potential
readers of your code.

         -- Paul Prescod
%
Mathematics belongs to God.
        -- Donald E. Knuth
%
If you don't understand how things are connected,
the cause of problems is solutions.

        -- Amory B. Lovins
%
Going inside of
malls you're protesting is dumb:
stay on public streets!

        -- Seth David Schoen
%
If they think you're crude, go technical; if they
think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical
boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These
days, though, you have to be pretty technical before
you can even aspire to crudeness.

        -- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic"
%
Due to pollution, cars pose a mortal threat to the
security of every nation.

        -- Senator Al Gore
           from his 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance"

Cars have freed the American spirit and given us the
chance to chase our dreams.

        -- Vice President Al Gore 
           in a 1999 speech to the Economic Club of Detroit.
%
Never criticize anybody until you have walked a mile
in their shoes, because by that time you will be a
mile away and have their shoes.

        -- Brian Servis
%
Most non-computer users prefer Linux as their
hypothetical operating system.

        -- Seth David Schoen
%
Don't ask for permission. Just do it! It's easier
to apologize for having done something than it is to
get permission to do it.

       -- Admiral Grace Hopper
%
I have always wished that my computer would be as
easy to use as my telephone.  My wish has come true.
I no longer know how to use my telephone.

        -- Bjarne Stroustrup
%
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom
of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably
to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a
redress of grievances.

         -- Marc Rotenberg 
%
The entire 1980s seem like a bad dream and/or
unfortunate accident.  This is our fresh start, folks:
the Golden Age, part II.

         -- Rick Moen
            3 July 1999
%
Bullshitting is at once the least useful and the most
highly compensated of human activities.
%
As for systems that are not like Unix, such as MSDOS,
Windows, the Macintosh, VMS, and MVS, supporting
them is usually so much work that it is better if
you don't.

        -- Richard M. Stallman "GNU Coding Standards"
%
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than
any invention in human history, with the possible
exceptions of handguns and tequila.

        -- Mitch Ratcliffe, Technology Review, April 1992 
%
Put the banjo DOWN and back AWAY from the microphone.
%
Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with
Browser X" label on a Web page appears to be yearning
for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had
very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another
network.

        -- Tim Berners-Lee
           Technology Review, July 1996
%
I have not had the time to search the patent
literature systematically; indeed, I decry the current
tendency to seek patents on algorithms.  If somebody
sends me a copy of a relevant patent not presently
cited in this book, I will dutifully refer to it in
future editions. However, I want to encourage people
to continue the centuries-old mathematical tradition
of putting newly discovered algorithms into the public
domain. There are better ways to earn a living than
to prevent other people from making use of one's
contributions to computer science.

        -- Donald E. Knuth
           The Art of Computer Programming, Volume III
%
We knew from experience that the essence of communal
computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared
machines, is not just to type programs into a
terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage
close communication.

          -- Dennis Ritchie 
%
Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we
should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not
desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much
as for the right. The only obligation which I have
a right to assume is to do at any time what I think
right.  It is truly enough said that a corporation has
no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men
is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made
men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect
for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the
agents of injustice.

          -- Henry David Thoreau
             "Civil Disobedience"
%
Information wants to be $6.95.
%
Connect and let go.  That's flirting.  Don't connect
then forget to let go.  That's stalking.

        -- Ginie Sayles
%
I drove around to the Circus-Circus Casino and parked
near the back door.  "This is the place," I said.
"They'll never fuck with us here."

        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
KILL THE BODY AND THE HEAD WILL DIE.
        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
Don't take any guff from these swine.
        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
There is nothing in the world more helpless and
irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths
of an ether binge.

        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.
Five years later?  Six?  It seems like a lifetime,
or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never
comes again.  San Francisco in the middle sixties was
a very special time and place to be a part of.  Maybe
it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long run...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour.
If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down
101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could strike
sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal
sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we
were winning...

And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of
inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil.
Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need
that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs.  We had
all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high
and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years
later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and
look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can
almost see the high-water mark -- that place where
the wave finally broke and rolled back.

        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
Every now and then, when your life gets complicated
and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is
to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like
a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.

        -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
Michael Corleone: Soldiers are paid to fight; the
rebels aren't.

Hyman Roth: What does that tell you?

Michael Corleone: It tells me the rebels could win. 

        -- "The Godfather, Part II" 
%
A calmness came over me when I realized computers
were just like any other machine. They just don't
have grease all over them.

        -- Bill Schoolcraft
%
                        ACHTUNG!!!

Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und
mittengrabben.  Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk,
blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit spitzensparken.
Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen.  Das
rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets.
Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!!

%
Heuer's Law: Any feature is a bug unless it can be 
turned off.
%
Love is like a snowmobile flying over the frozen
tundra that suddenly flips, pinning you underneath. At
night, the ice weasels come.

        -- Matt Groening 
%
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid
things, because that would also stop you from doing
clever things.

        -- Doug Gwyn 
%
The Three Great Virtues of a Programmer

Laziness

The quality that makes you go to the great effort
to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you
write labor-saving programs that other people will
find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't
have to answer so many questions about it. Hence,
the first great virtue of a programmer.

Impatience

The anger you feel when the computer is being
lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just
react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or
at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue
of a programmer.

Hubris

Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you
for. Also the quality that makes you write (and
maintain) programs that other people won't want to
say bad things about. Hence, the third great virute
of a programmer.

         -- Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz
            Programming perl 
%
When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because
I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment,
I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took
the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own
a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I
can only be quiet.

          -- Myhr Lyle
%
"Elegance?" 

"Pardon me, Your Honor, the concept is not easy
to explain--there is an ineffable quality to
some technology, described by its creators as
a concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice
hack--signs that it was made with great care by one
who was not merely motivated but inspired.  It is
the difference between an engineer and a hacker."

        -- Judge Fang and Miss Pao
           in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age,
           or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
%
Eat flaming death, microkernel mongrels!
         -- Nick Moffitt
%
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory.
         -- Jello Biafra 
%
Overheard at Internet World 1998: Did you ever notice
that when you say, "Hey, you with the hair!" all the
Linux users turn around?
%
We had to disable that for security.
%

Translations marked with a percent sign refer to
the prospective attendee as a man because of gender
imparities in the language in question. This is
not intended to suggest that female Linux users are
discouraged from attending; they should lobby their
vendors to get this behavior changed in the next
version of the language.

        -- Seth Schoen
           in "Rick Moen will be there, will you?"
%
Practice, man, practice.
        -- traditional answer to 
           "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"
%
A small clue and no budget will get you further than
a big budget and no clue.
%
No country with a McDonald's outlet has ever gone to
war with another.

        -- James Langton
%
People understand instinctively that the best way for
computer programs to communicate with each other is
for each of the them to be strict in what they emit,
and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is
that people themselves are not willing to be strict
in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen.
You'd think that would also be obvious.

        -- Larry Wall
%
We have also sound-houses, where we practise and
demonstrate all sounds, and their generation.  We have
harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds,
and lesser slides of sounds.  Divers instruments
of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than
any you have, together with bells and rings that are
dainty and sweet.  We represent small sounds as great
and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp;
we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds,
which in their original are entire.  We represent
and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and
the voices and notes of beasts and birds.  We have
certain helps which set to the ear do further the
hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and
artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times,
and as it were tossing it: and some that give back
the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some
deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the
letters or articulate sound from that they receive.
We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and
pipes, in strange lines and distances.

        -- Sir Francis Bacon
           The New Atlantis
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I [suspect] we are throwing more and more of our
resources, including the cream of our youth, into
financial activities remote from the production of
goods and services, into activities that generate
high private rewards disproportionate to their
social productivity. I suspect that the immense
power of the computer is being harnessed to this
"paper economy", not to do the same transactions more
economically but to balloon the quantity and variety
of financial exchanges....I fear that, as Keynes saw
even in his day, the advantages of the liquidity and
negotiability of financial instruments come at the
cost of facilitating nth-degree speculation which is
short-sighted and inefficient.

        -- James Tobin, 1984
%

1.  The planet known as Teegeeack - local dialect
"Earth" or Terra - Sun 12, Sector 9, is hereby
declared a Free Zone.

2. No political interference in its affairs from any
other part of the Sector or Galaxy will be tolerated.

3. No economic interference in its affairs will be
tolerated from any non-planetary agency or power.

4. All of its inhabitants are hereby declared Free
Zone Citizens and free of external political or
economic interference.

        -- L. Ron Hubbard
%
The legal [interest] rate ought not be much above
the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest
in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as
eight or ten per cent, the greater part of the money
which was to be lent would be lent to prodigals and
projectors, who alone would be willing to give this
high interest. A great part of the capital of the
country would thus be kept out of the hands which were
most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use
of it, and thrown into those which were most likely
to waste and destroy it.

When the legal rate of interest, on the contrary is
fixed but a very little above the lowest market rate,
sober people are universally preferred, as borrowers,
to prodigals and projectors. The person who lends
money gets nearly as much interest from the former
as he dares to take from the latter, and his money is
much safer in the hands of the one set of people than
in those of the other. A great part of the capital
of the country is thus thrown in the hands in which
it is most likely to be employed with advantage.

        -- Adam Smith
%
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands
and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of
property have been so far extended as to violate
natural right.

        -- Thomas Jefferson
%
Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating
integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs
of people--rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of
a greedy elite.

Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption.
Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal.
Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect
government with grass roots.

If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider
changing sides!

        -- Col. John Boyd, USAF
%
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail
in the end--which you can never afford to lose--with
the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of
your current reality, whatever they might be. 

        -- Adm. James Stockdale, USN
%
I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely
elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book
of Revelation than anything else in the English
language--and it is not because I am a biblical
scholar, or because of any religious faith, but
because I love the wild power of the language and
the purity of the madness that governs it and makes
it music.

        -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and
nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to
condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law
allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it,
therefore, he will generally prefer the service of
slaves to that of freemen.

        -- Adam Smith
%
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much
of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price,
and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at
home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad
effects of high profits. They are silent with regard
to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They
complain only of those of other people.

        -- Adam Smith

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