gistfile1.txt

QUOTES

http://www.thehypertexts.com/epigrams_in_literature_and_poetry.htm

"The myths surrounding him cover up the fact that Columbus was calculating, shrewd and as hungry for gold as the voice over guy in the Cash4Gold ads."
Cracked.com

They fall into the trap of thinking that happiness is simply the absence of doing unpleasant tasks instead of actively doing pleasant ones
5 Ways Your Brain is Tricking You Into Being Unhappy

"If this result at CERN is proved to be right, and particles are found to travel faster than the speed of light, then I am prepared to eat my shorts, live on TV," Jim Al-Khalili, a professor of theoretical physics at Britain's University of Surrey, declared at the time.

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words; watch your words, for they become actions; watch your actions, for they become habits; watch your habits, for they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Unknown

“Money is like gas in the car – you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road – but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations!”
Tim O’Reilly

"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them" -- Heisenberg
 
In the venerable wors of Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further.”

"The NSA’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything. [...] There would be no place to hide."--Frank Church 

In response to the failure of the water coolant systems in the Utah desert NSA data retention facilities:
"All the water do belong to us and not the NSA for God's friggening sake.”

"Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it." - Frank Herbert 

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt — 


"Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival, an anachronism of the now defunct '90s PC era, a pre-Web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T. rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son's utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of the Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl.”
Yahoo promoting its mail service to employees

According to chemistry, alcohol is a solution.
Unknown

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” 
– Albert Einstein

“Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde

"I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody” 
- Benjamin Franklin

It takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
 "A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men” 
- Carlyle.

“Every man is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him” 
- Emerson.

"It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
&
"When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotions, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
&
 "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." 
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People


there's a lot of studies that show that once people develop a negative self image that they tend to take actions that reinforce that self image, often without realizing their doing it. i.e. if a person thinks they're dumb they become unable to do anything smart. This is where the "Precious Little Snowflake" movement came from. You praise kids even if they're not doing very well because if you don't they don't just get discouraged, they quickly come to believe that success is impossible and subconsciously sabotage themselves. 
American Puritanicalism runs counter to this. The idea there is that adversity breeds character. I'm inclined to disagree with this. What I mostly see is adversity wears people down. The problem is that people who've been crushed at best fade away quietly and at worst end up in prison. Either way they're marginalized. The few that survive and prosper are much more visible. The phenomenon's called survival bias.
rsilvergun, Slashdot, “All In All, Kids Just Another Brick In the Data Wall”


Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” - Nelson Mandela 

"The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid' Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiately cllaed Typoglycemia” - excerpt from Stars With a Bang: Ask Ethan #32

When fear speaks, it’s always wrong -tut

what you see in others, exists in you - zig ziglar

listen to understand - not to form your reply

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
-Albert Einstein 

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.” 
― Nikola Tesla, My Inventions

"Maximize shareholder value. That phrase is used to justify: higher prices, lower service, lower quality parts, environmental damage, damage to the long-term future of our nation, and general unethical corporate behavior (skimming, fleecing, shell corporations, tax loophole exploits). I’m not opposed to making money as a shareholder. But that money isn’t made out of thin air, and it doesn’t come from the seller. It comes from the American public. We pay that. When you get your dividend check or sell your stocks for a fat profit, that money came from me, from your neighbors, from your family and friends, from anyone that ever bought a product or service from that company. You paid for it too.
Similar to the underlying storyline in the movie The Matrix, I’m of the ever-increasing opinion that the US public is viewed as (literally) a cash crop by people who trade in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Top 1% income type of people. If we’re over-farmed, we’ll rebel. But if we’re fed and nurtured, told it’s for our own good, even made to believe that if we buy stocks we can come along for the ride; the money will slowly move from our pockets to that top 1%. We think because we made 8-18% on our investment portfolio we’re doing ok, being good citizens, and saving for our retirement. But we don’t realize we overpaid by 20-60% for the goods and services to make that happen.”



"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” - H.L. Mencken

“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” - Shakespeare


Reality is not totally one, but it is not totally two, either! Stay with that necessary dilemma, and it can make you wise. I already know what I know. What I don’t know is what you know. And that is surely much more interesting"
” - Jonathan Lareau


Werner Erhard: “There is something I do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.”

Have a fast ear and a slow tongue. ~Mark Ward


"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful".
Seneca The Younger


"we can then assume that anyone NOT communicating with foreigners is simply doing so to avoid their communications being intercepted without a warrant - making their communications suspicious and allowing us to get a broad warrant to intercept all such communications. 

Game, set, match.”
Techdirt comment


copyright policymaking is driven mainly by politics, self-interest and deep-seated notions of morality at the expense of actual empirical evidence.
Techdirt Article “The End of Maximalist Copyright?


George Orwell's pithy definition: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

"One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate.” - Naom Chomsky



"Therefore because thou trample on the poor
and taketh from them levies of grain,
thou have built houses of hewn stone,
but thou shalt not live in them;
Thou have planted pleasant vineyards,
but thou shalt not drink their wine.
For I know how many are thy transgressions,
and how great are thy sins-
thou who afflict the righteous, who taketh a bribe,
and push aside the needy in the gate.”


American Freedom is a myth. We live in a tyrannical state like the world has never seen before, one so pure the people believe they're actually free.


America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ---Abraham Lincoln

"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...." -- Thomas J. Kopp


The fact is, brain size doesn't have much to do with intelligence. That's why mice can navigate mazes but whales keep getting caught in fishing nets. It's not the size that counts, it's what you do with it. You're not going to get any smarter by swapping your brain with a big, juicy elephant brain -- you're just going to stand around like an idiot trying to pick things up with your nose. As it turns out, brain size correlates pretty much with how big the animal is, and that's about it. - cracked


"Contrary to popular belief, throwing garbage into pools of water doesn't make it disappear.”

???
U X e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159…


Anonymous wasn’t made for easy times; the trickster sleeps when all is well.
Norton, Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz


Hello Troll, I think your confusion lies in your inability to comprehend scale or derive useful meaning from data. In your frustration, lashing out seems your only recourse - but there are other ways of coping. - Me

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


“Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”
- Sir Winston Churchill


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


“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it." - Patrick Henry

Human beings can rationalize anything, not the least of which is their own suffering. -C Fenwick



You can always dress up hatred of minorities as "pride" or "rights" for the majority (the Westboro Baptist Church doesn't hate gays, see, they're just standing up for Christians).

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” —Nietzsche


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clark
("Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”) haha


[after slicing one of the Black Knight's arms off]

King Arthur: Now stand aside, worthy adversary. 

Black Knight: 'Tis but a scratch. 

King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off. 

Black Knight: No it isn't. 

King Arthur: What's that, then? 

Black Knight: [after a pause] I've had worse. 

King Arthur: You liar. 

Black Knight: Come on ya pansy.





You didn't come here to face hurdle after hurdle after hurdle. It's not as if by mastering your issues today, more issues will be added tomorrow. That only happens when you deny them today. Master your issues, today, and be free. 





Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.



The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.



Alberto Brandolini, "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”


That being said, some people will never stop arguing under the premise that yelling the same thing over and over again with no supporting evidence until the other person shakes their head and walks away means you've won the argument.


"I will speak ill of no man." he said, "... and speak all the good I know of everybody.” - TJefferson

"Ben, you are impossible. Your opinions have a slap in them for everyone who differs with you. They have become so expensive that nobody cares for them. Your friends find they enjoy themselves better when you are not around. You know so much that no man can tell you anything. Indeed, no man is going to try, for the effort would lead only to discomfort and hard work. So you are not likely ever to know any more than you do now, which is very little.” '


It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry. - Einstein

How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality? - Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.  - Einstein


rule 0.99996.
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down! NO EXCEPTIONS!



but... Really?! That's positively revolting. Watt do these people in power think they're doing? I hope you got to short-circuit the appeals process to charge them with misconduct!

Sorry, these puns had potential, but instead I took it down to the wire and wound up driving the joke into the ground.





Concerning Doublethink / Cognitive Dissonance 

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.”

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

George Orwell, 1984 (on doublespeak)


The great epigrammatists will invariably do one of two things: they will either amuse and bemuse us into wisdom, or they will scathe us into wisdom.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me 
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

Time's fun when you're having flies.—Kermit the Frog
A hard man is good to find.—Mae West
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.—Unknown



Brevity is the soul of wit.—William Shakespeare

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

If God 
is good
half the Bible 
is libel. 
—Michael R. Burch



Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly."
Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."



Wo-Man? Is that a...wo-man?

the mind of a frat boy in the body of a nerd
only memory of a vagina was when he was forced out of one
So, thanks to their real life experience, the only basis they have for interacting with women is:

1) Pornstars

2) Their mom

So if it's not getting railed while screaming about how big their dick is or baking them cookies, they literally have no idea how to deal with it.

That same desperate need to believe they're not a waste of air will keep them from listening to any sort of well-reasoned argument that contradicts anything they believe, whether it's that not all women are hos and tricks to what the best pizza place in town is. 



Unfair treatment of men? Do you not realise that every single example of “unfair treatment for men” was prescribed BY men? Women are too delicate, like little flowers, they could never serve in combat, so why would we ever draft them?

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.


There is nothing rational about rebellion. To rebel against insurmountable odds is an act of faith. And without this faith the rebel is doomed. This faith is intrinsic to the rebel the way caution and prudence are intrinsic to those who seek to fit into existing power structures. The rebel, possessed by inner demons and angels, is driven by visions familiar to religious mystics. And it is the rebel alone who can save us from corporate tyranny. I do not know if these rebels will succeed. But I do know that a world without them is hopeless.



To hear Comcast tell it, the company found at least 600 "thoughtful and positive" people who think Comcast getting immensely more massive is a great idea: Did we mention we pay most of these people for their support? I think we might have forgotten to mention that. - Comcast Accidentally Admits It's Unsure Of The Competitive Impact Of Its Own Merger

"My story isn't sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dreams, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves." Hermann Hesse


Digital circuits are made from analog parts.
        -- Don Vonada

It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong.
        -- Chris Torek

The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone

6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears    = Avocado's number

Whose fault is this? What is our responsibility in the matter of such weak, unprepared, or broken personalities? Should we pad the very walls and take out all the tubs and razors and knives and muzzle each and every one of us to prevent poor Cluetard McDimwit from wrist slitting lest something rises to the level of offense in the dim, dysfunctional reaches of what passes for his mind?
No one has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a collective, or a group, or a society, or a community; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (collective, society, community) may not offend another; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another. And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not. Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.
In order to have freedoms, we must be educated well enough, and prepared well enough, to deal with them. If the fact that some cannot deal with them is sufficient to the cause to limit those freedoms, then eventually, they will erode away to nothing. Likely there will always be some personality on the borderline of collapsing at some provocation, imaginary or otherwise. Should we really attempt to tune our whole society to the lowest possible standard of discourse as a result?
 fyngyrz, /.



I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” 
― Frank Herbert, Dune


“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” 
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton


“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin


“One may say that true life begins where the tiny bit begins—where what seems to us minute and infinitely small alterations take place. True life is not lived where great external changes take place—where people move about, clash, fight and slay one another—it is lived only where these tiny, tiny infinitesimal changes occur.
—Leo Tolstoy, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?”

Excerpt From: E. Gabriella Coleman. “Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking.” iBooks. 



 “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” - carl sagan


“History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”
- Edward Gibbon, historian (1737-1794)


“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin


“It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
- Aristotle

brevity is the soul of wit

“Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.” 
- Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)

Murphy's Laws:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done. -  /. (-- Murphy's Laws on Technology n°4)

You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to
float on his back, you've really got something.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

LaGuardia’s Law: Statistics are like expert witnesses – they will testify for either side.

Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

____________

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

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

Ignotum per æque ignotum, meaning "the unknown by the equally unknown"

(Rumsfeld)
the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. 


"For if one seeks the objective, understood as the cause of sensations, in the things that appear in sensation, one’s search is at once led beyond appearances, since even the simplest scientific observation shows that things are not as they are perceived…in short they may not be endowed with sensory qualities at all.”
even realism made sophisticated by the admission that objectivity does not lie within sensation but resides within transcendental entities like atoms
the point of contact between the objective and the sensations they produce i.e, the act in which the real reveals itself to the knower, is shrouded in subjective mystery.
the objective world, which is beyond all experience, is composed of those entities which the scientist, primarily the physicist, continues to discover. 
2 major problems it cannot resolve; one is philosophical and one is physical


"Work is the curse of the drinking class"


Marge:   Homer, I don't want you driving around in a car you built yourself. 
Homer:  You can sit there complaining, or you can knit me some seat belts.

Ralph:  Me fail English? That's unpossible.

Homer:  If he's so smart, how come he's dead?


FRENCH GUARD: You don’t frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! Thppt!Thppt! 
GALAHAD: What a strange person. 
ARTHUR: Now look here, my good man— 
FRENCH GUARD: I don’t wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

FRENCH GUARD: How you English say, ‘I one more time, mac, unclog my nose in your direction’, sons of a window-dresser! So, you think you could out-clever us French folk with your silly knees-bent running about advancing behavior?!

(Parrot Sketch)
PRALINE: It’s not pining, it’s passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.


"Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift
that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is 
another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefinable whipped
mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left 
to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English 
toffee. But they're gone too fast and the taste is... fleeting. So, you 
end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and 
teeth-shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those, all 
you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers. "
- Cigarette Smoking Man, X-Files

"We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're all gonna die before it ends." - Peter Watts


"The person who knows "how" will always have a job. The person who knows "why" will always be his boss." --Diane Ravitch

Einstein said that genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops. Stop nodding your head.

If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." --Helen Keller

When you have completed 95% of your journey you are halfway there. (Japanese Proverb)

while you sit on your moral high ground made of rice flour 

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing. -- Anatole France

I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. -- Albert Einstein

Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you.

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Some see things as they are and ask `Why?' I choose to see things as they never were and ask `Why not?'" -- Robert Kennedy

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.  --Herbert Spencer

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.—Mohandas Gandhi

Through space, one thought kept crossing my mind: every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.—John Glenn

Happiness is like a butterfly: 
the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. 
But if you turn your attention to other things, 
it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
—Henry David Thoreau

Candy
is dandy,
but liquor
is quicker.
—Ogden Nash

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.—Charlotte Whitton

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.—Will Rogers

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.—Mark Twain

War does not determine who is right, just who is left.—Unknown, associated by fans of Dan Fogelberg with his song "Ghosts"

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.—Malcolm X

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.—Voltaire

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.—Helen Keller 

There are none so blind as those who will not see.—John Heywood (often attributed to Jonathan Swift)

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.—Oscar Wilde’s Last Words

Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.—Voltaire, on his deathbed, when asked by a priest to denounce Satan

I said Ed, how do you abbreviate Arkansas? "I don't know, you just start spelling it and quit." 
-Mitch Hedberg

A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle 
-Vique

Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death. 
-Polybius

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 W. Kernighan

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. 
-Richard Feynman

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle. 
-Bucky, Get Fuzzy 8-15-07

Corry's Law: Paper is always strongest at the perforations.

My pajamas are by definition the cat’s pajamas. 



Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:
And as they drifted up, their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
"The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”
"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”
 A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.
The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another.
“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”
“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened. (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy", 1980)
Don’t Panic



"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again.”

Marvin: Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to take you to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction, 'cause I don't. 

-- Marvin The Paranoid Android




Marvin: Sorry, did I say something wrong? Pardon me for breathing which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it oh God I'm so depressed. 

Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed. 

Marvin: Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they tell me to take you up to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? Cause I don't. 

Marvin: And then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side. 
Arthur Dent: Really. 
Marvin: Oh, yes. I mean, I've asked for them to be replaced, but no-one ever listens. 

Marvin: Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I'm standing? 




Voltaire
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. 
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (NOT VOLTAIRE!)

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.



"The test for whether one is living in a police state is that those who are charged with enforcing the law are allowed to break the laws with impunity." -- J. Roland



"It's easier to put on shoes than to carpet the whole world."



You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Jacques Abbadie


'First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.’  (arguments)

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” 
― Plato

“Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist


The Big Lebowsky:
Shut up, Walter! Don't say fucking peep while I'm doing business here.




While nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge. 
J. B. S. Haldane, On Being the Right Size (http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html)



veg(an)(itarian)(etably idiotic)

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” 
― Arthur Miller, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan




“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”  -  Jim Morrison
 
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” -  Edward R. Murrow
 
"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."-Thomas Paine
 
"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."  New York Times Co. v. United States -  US Supreme Court - June 30, 1971
 
"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" -  Adlai E. Stevenson   (American Politician. Governor of Illinois (1949-53) and Ambassador to the United Nations (1961-65). 1900 -1965)
 
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”  -  James Madison


"Of this Word's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word, they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.” — Heraclitus

"It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled” —Mark Twain



Mark Twain:
"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
"The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it!”
“Writing is easy, all you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”


Oscar Wilde:
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
"This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.”
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.”
"There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.”
"I am not young enough to know everything.”
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.”
“The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray”
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.”
"Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.”
"





The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to
which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption
that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the
mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances,
but one too easily forgets that it is false. —Alan M. Turing



"Magic is often just the over-application of understood systems to areas of reality where they do not apply."



“One may say that true life begins where the tiny bit begins—where what seems to us minute and infinitely small alterations take place. True life is not lived where great external changes take place—where people move about, clash, fight and slay one another—it is lived only where these tiny, tiny infinitesimal changes occur."
—Leo Tolstoy, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?

Excerpt From: E. Gabriella Coleman. “Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking.” iBooks. 




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



This one!  "Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. And yet it all seems limitless…"
Brandon Lee


“Democratic” decision making is a means for finding and implementing the will of the majority; it has no other function. It serves, not to encourage diversity, but to prevent it. -David Friedman


The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter. —Winston Churchill



“When 99% of people doubt your idea, you are either gravely wrong or about to make history."

The truth will set you free

arbeit macht frei    (work will set you free - written above entrance to nazi concentration camp.)


"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.” — Milton


Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig. -- Lazarus Long


"The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.”


Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.  They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes


Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.


Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. -- Oscar Wilde


"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here.” -- Biff in "Back to the Future"


Felson's Law:
    To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
    many is research.


Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.


"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if
it were a nail."
-- Abraham Maslow


The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke


Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.


Lo!  Men have become the tool of their tools.
        -- Henry David Thoreau


You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.


In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
        -- R.G. Ingersoll


Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you.


Fools ignore complexity.  Pragmatists suffer it.
Some can avoid it.  Geniuses remove it.
-- Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept.  1982


The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be
correct.
        -- William of Occam


"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.”


Science and religion are in full accord but science and faith are in complete discord.


"It's like deja vu all over again."   -- Yogi Berra


The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.


"I've seen it.  It's rubbish."
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android


Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
        — Theophrastus


"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is 
shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
-- Albert Einstein


I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
        -- H.L. Mencken


The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
and owns the worm farm.
        -- Travis McGee


The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.


A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
        -- P. Erdos


For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!


Never believe someone who carries fire in one hand and water in the other


“given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”


(all Nietzsche)
There are no facts, only interpretations. 

Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
— Friedrich Nietzsche


Silence is the residue of fear. It is feeling your flaws gut-wrench guillotine your tongue. It is the air retreating from your chest because it doesn't feel safe in your lungs... It is the sound after the noose is already tied. It is charring. It is chains. It is privilege. It is pain. There is no time to pick your battles when your battles have already picked you.
--Clint Smith: The danger of silence


03:38 mythomaniac: the imporant part is they make you think and see things in a different way
03:38 mythomaniac: and its something our species have used throughout history...
03:38 paper_kitten_: well, they can be and then again they can be both toxic and arresting


Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.
Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control!
Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?
Dalek Sec: Four.
Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You superior in only one respect.
Cyber Leader: What is that?
Dalek Sec: You are better at dying. Raise communications barrier!
[video link with Cyber Leader cuts out]


"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" -Anonymous

“Well, we’re all wounded. We carry our wounds around with us through life, and eventually they kill us. Things happen that leave a mark in space, in time. In us.”


But to me death is not a fearful thing, it’s living that’s treacherous. 


Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things. - S. Covey



"Faith" means not wanting to know what is true. 
— Friedrich Nietzsche  The Antichrist

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
— Friedrich Nietzsche  Thus Spoke Zarathustra

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche  

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche  The Antichrist



I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.
Douglas Adams  

"I'd far rather be happy than right any day."
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe


"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first"
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"I don't want to die now. I've still got a headache. I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it"
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"What's up?" [asked Ford.]
"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams  Mostly Harmless


Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams  Last Chance to See


Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Douglas Adams  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are 'It might have been.'
Kurt Vonnegut  Cat's Cradle


Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."
Kurt Vonnegut  Timequake

Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?
Kurt Vonnegut  A Man Without a Country


"You hate America, don't you?" she said.
"That would be as silly as loving it," I said. "It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will."
Kurt Vonnegut  Mother Night




What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.
Friedrich Nietzsche  On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense


If you lie on the ground on your back, it's like the world is your backpack and you're carrying it through space.



Commercial OSes have to adopt the same official stance towards errors as Communist countries had towards poverty. For doctrinal reasons it was not possible to admit that poverty was a serious problem in Communist countries, because the whole point of Communism was to eradicate poverty. Likewise, commercial OS companies like Apple and Microsoft can’t go around admitting that their software has bugs and that it crashes all the time, any more than Disney can issue press releases stating that Mickey Mouse is an actor in a suit.
Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999)






“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.” 
Kurt Vonnegut




“Thomas Jefferson High School was named after a slave owner who was also one of
the world’s greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty.” 

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions



“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” 
Seneca







also, the idea that war happens because we want to stop 'bad things' from happening is not really true...and is used as a cover for less agreeable motives. 





We grow up in a controlled society, where we are told that when one person kills another person, that is murder, but when the government kills a hundred thousand, that is patriotism.
Howard Zinn




“The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe 





First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. 

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)



No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
Plato



A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde    



It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. 
Thoreau 
 


The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. 
George Orwell 



If Democrats proclaim the the Earth is round and Republicans insist it is flat, we will shortly see a column in the Washington Post claiming the the earth is really a semi-circle. 



“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” 
Carl Sagan



more sense, less enter



WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
George Orwell  1984


People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. 
Soren Kierkegaard 




In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. 
Alexis de Tocqueville


The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:  if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.  
John Stuart Mill


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  
Alfred Whitney Griswold


Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.  
Abbott Joseph Liebling


Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.  
Mark Twain



That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well. 
Heinrich Heine

These electrons are ultimately going to be transferred by a system of electron carriers to O2 to form H2O.
  
Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.  
Dick Cavett


I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.
Oscar Wilde


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



E²=(mc²)²+(pc)²

E=mc^2 + pc



The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.
Henry Steele Commager 


The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
Brian Cox


Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.
Philip Pullman


A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.
Nick Harkaway, The Blind Giant 


"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."


I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
Woody Allen


Comment to surveillance article:
"Oh come on. I know a guy with that same attitude at work. You're normalizing the situation with this nonsense fantasy that you knew all along. You didn't know all along... you worried about it, you feared for it, but you didn't know Now you do, and you should be surprised... shocked... outraged... But to sit back in your lazyboy, burp, and say "yea, I figured!" is freaking ridiculous. Write you God damned congressman. Get a picket sign. The house is on fire, just because you told the kids not to play with matches doesn't mean you don't need to grab a bucket now.”
Charliemopps



Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.


"1984" was a warning, NOT A BLOODY GUIDEBOOK
Anonymous



06:11 sunstar: yes
06:11 dw1: 2/2
06:11 paper_kitten: you mean 100/103
06:12 paper_kitten: we shall never speak of those two times
06:12 paper_kitten: four times