RS Classics: Saturday Quote-a-thon - Words of Wisdom I

So, since we were dealing with an angsty teen, I decided to provide the kind of words of wisdom the young are so unlikely to heed until it’s too late. Or maybe I’m doing them a disservice. These are among my favorites, though I should add that I have many more. It’s just the tip of the iceberg and all for you to enjoy.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
–Albert Einstein

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
–William Faulkner

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

The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
–John Adams

It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external causes, rather than on the facility with which we ourselves are caught by such causes.
-Aristotle

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.
–Frederic Bastiat

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
–Josh Billings

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
–Daniel Boorstin

Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.
–Heywood Broun

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
–Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
–Winston Churchill

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
–Charles Caleb Colton

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
–Clarence Darrow

Why are CEO’s who slash jobs so proud of themselves? Instead of bragging about “cutting fat,” they ought to be getting up before their employees and saying, “We did such a lousy job of planning and hiring that we have more people than work. And we are so broke and so dim-witted that we can’t come up with any way to get more work. So our only solution is to send a lot of good people home. I am ashamed and I am sorry.”
–Dale Dauten

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.
–Charles Dickens

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
–Fyodor Doestoyvsky

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.
–Peter Drucker

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
–Thomas Edison

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RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Movie Quotes

Gotta love the movies.

Still, since we’re in movie quote mode, I might as well show some quotes I keep on my quote list mostly ’cause they make me laugh. Some I gathered from Wikiquote at one point or another or from IMDB in the past. Some are from memory, so no promises I didn’t flub a couple, but you get the gist.

Ms. Perky: People perceive you as somewhat…
Kat: Tempestuous?
Ms. Perky: “Heinous bitch” is the term used most often. You might want to work on that.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Father: Hello, Kat, made anyone cry today?
Kat: Sadly, no, but it’s only 4:30.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Ms. Perky: You’ll be pleased to know his testicle retrieval operation was successful.
Kat: I still maintain he kicked himself in the balls.
-From 10 Things I Hate About You

Dionne Davenport: Hello! There was a stop sign.
Cher Horowitz: I totally paused.
-From Clueless

Josh Lucas: If I ever saw you do anything that wasn’t 90% selfish I’d die of shock.
Cher Horowitz: Oh, that’d be reason enough for me.
-From Clueless

Mel: Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt you would be missed.
-From Clueless

Morticia: Margaret, about the séance tonight, I wish you’d come. It’s Gomez. I’m terribly worried about him. He won’t eat, he can’t sleep, he keeps coughing up blood.
Margaret: He coughs up blood?
Morticia: Well, not like he used to.
-From The Addams Family

Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.
-Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

[on telephone] Hello… Operator? Can you hear my voice? You can? Are you sure? [Hangs up] Well, then I must not be dreaming.
-Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

I love it when mothers get so mad they can’t remember your name. “Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga… what is your name, boy? And don’t lie to me, because you live here, and I’ll find out who you are.
-From Bill Cosby: Himself

Vance: [after telling Hitch that he only wants a girl so he can sleep with her] No, I was told that you help guys get in there.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Right, but see, here’s the thing - my clients actually like women. “Hit it and quit it” is not my thing.
Vance: Let me make one thing clear to you, rabbi, I need professional help.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Well, that is for damn certain
-From Hitch

Vance: [grabs Hitch by the wrist] You see what I’m doing? This is what I’m about - power suit, power tie, power steering. People can wince, cry, beg, but eventually they do what I want.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Oh! So that’s, like, a metaphor?
Vance: Oh, yeah.
Alex Hitch Hitchens: Right. Well, see, I’m more of a literal kind of guy. So when I do this… [he reverses the grip, twists Vance’s arm back and slams him on the table]
Alex Hitch Hitchens: This is more like me saying that I will literally break your shit off if you ever touch me again. Okay, pumpkin?
-From Hitch

Moses - “The lord Jehovah has given you these fifteen… [drops stone tablet] Oi. Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!”
-From History of the Word, Part I

Memo to me, memo to me: maim you after my meeting.
-From Hercules

This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.
-From Groundhog Day

What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.
-From Groundhog Day

Mr. Newberry: So, what have you been doing with your life?
Martin: Um… professional killer.
Mr. Newberry: Ah, good for you! It’s a growth industry
-From Gross Pointe Blank

Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn’t stopped me.
-From Ghostbusters

Chief Karlin: What’s your name?
Fletch: Fletch.
Chief Karlin: What’s your full name?
Fletch: Fletch F. Fletch.
Chief Karlin: What do you do for a living, Mr. Fletch?
Fletch: I’m a shepherd.
-From Fletch

Fletch: Can’t keep me here, chief.
Chief Karlin: Maybe I’m not going to keep you here. Maybe I’m going to blow your brains out.
Fletch: Well, now, I’m no lawyer, but… I do believe that’s a violation of my rights.
-From Fletch

Cameron: Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.
Ferris: A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.
-From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Willie Wang: Why do I do all the dirty work, Pop?
Sidney Wang: Because your mother not here to do it.
-From Murder by Death

Willie Wang: Pop?
Sidney Wang: Yeah?
Willie Wang: Who do you think is the murderer?
Sidney Wang: Must sleep on it. Will know in morning when wake up.
Willie Wang: What if you don’t wake up?
Sidney Wang: Then you did it.
-From Murder by Death

Vinny: Ms. Vito, you’re supposed to be some kinda expert in automobiles, is that correct?… Is that correct?
Judge Haller: Would you please answer the counselor’s question?
Lisa: No, I hate him.
Vinny: Your Honor, may I treat this witness as hostile?
Mona Lisa: You think I’m hostile now? Wait ’til tonight.
Judge Haller: Do you two know each other?
Vinny: Yeah, she’s my fiancée.
Judge Haller: Well, that would certainly explain the hostility
-From My Cousin Vinny

You know, these clothes do not fancy you at all. It should be a dress or nothing. I happen to have no dress in my cabin.
-Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

I’m listening. [Elizabeth holds a gun to his face] I’m listening intently.
-Lord Becket from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Elizabeth: There will come a moment when you have a chance to do the right thing.
Jack: I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.
-From Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Me, I’m dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for. Because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid.
-Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means no.
-Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, “I drank what?”
-Chris Knight from Real Genius

Chris Knight: I’m sorry, but have you ever seen a body like this before in your life?
David Decker: She happens to be my daughter.
Chris Knight: Oh. Then I guess you have.
-From Real Genius

Karen: So what’s this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We’ve been given our parts in the nativity play. And I’m the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, first lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.
-From Love Actually

[talking about her ex-boyfriend]
Natalie: He says no one’s gonna fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks. Not a nice guy, actually, in the end.
Prime Minister: Ah! You know, um, being Prime Minister, I could just have him murdered.
Natalie: Thank you, sir. I’ll think about it.
Prime Minister: Do. The SAS are absolutely charming. Ruthless trained killers are just a phone call away.
-From Love Actually

Prime Minister: I’m not sure that politics and dating really go together.
The President: Really? I never found that.
Prime Minister: Yeah, well, the difference is you’re still sickeningly handsome, whereas I look increasingly like my Aunt Mildred.
-From Love Actually

Colin: [after insulting the food] And what do you do Nancy?
Nancy the caterer: I’m a cook.
Colin: Ever do weddings?
Nancy the caterer: Yes I do.
Colin: They should have asked you to do this one.
Nancy the caterer: They did.
Colin: God I wish you hadn’t turned it down.
Nancy the caterer: I didn’t.
-From Love Actually

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Saturday Quotathon: Religion

I'm over halfway through my 127 pages of quotes. That's quite a few. I have a number of quotes dealing with religion. I'm a firm believer that everyone is entitled to believe however they choose as long as those beliefs don't lead to harm for others or imposing those beliefs on the unwilling. I'm also an advocate for thinking about one's beliefs. And recognize the dangers in blind faith where one's conscience is a casualty. You'll notice Mahatma Gandhi is well represented; we share many views on religion.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
- Jonathan Swift

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver of that precious gift.
-Giacomo Casanova

I'm not against God. I'm against the misuse of God.
- Marilyn Manson

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
-William Osler, M.D.

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.
-Robert Anton Wilson

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
- Charlotte Brontë

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of the truth.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Hinduism is like the Ganga, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every province, but the inner substance is retained everywhere.
-Mahatma Gandhi

My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.
-Mahatma Gandhi

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world’s progress toward peace … Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?
-Mahatma Gandhi

I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.
-Mahatma Gandhi

God has no religion
-Mahatma Gandhi

We must respect other religions, even as we respect our own. Mere tolerance thereof is not enough.
-Mahatma Gandhi

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
-Mahatma Gandhi

(When asked if he was a Hindu) Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.
-Mahatma Gandhi

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.
-Mahatma Gandhi

It is my firm opinion that Europe does not represent the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan. And Satan’s successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.
-Mahatma Gandhi

I consider western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ’s Christianity.
-Mahatma Gandhi

If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.
-Woody Allen

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
-Thomas Carlyle

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
-Mahatma Gandhi

If Christ was in fact God, he knew the persecutions that would be carried on in his name; he knew the millions that would suffer death through torture; and yet he died without saying one word to prevent what he must have known, if he were God, would happen.
-Robert Green Ingersoll

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
--Paul Valery

And lo, God said: Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me, and let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.
-John Wing

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
-Helen Keller

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.
-Robert Heinlein “Time Enough for Love”

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
-Richard Feynman

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.
- Max Born

Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car.
-Garrison Keillor

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Saturday Quotathon: Mixed Bag

Before today's quotes, I think I need a recap of the entries to the win the cards contest. What I need from everyone still interested in the cards, is confirmation that they are. I'm also going to list the great ideas people gave me who weren't interested. The contest continues through today and, Monday, I'll announce the winner.

Great ideas but don't want cards:

• Project Savior - What inspires me (already used it!)

Great ideas that might be entrants into the contest if they DO want cards. Do you? Let me know in a comment if you want the cards!

• flit - feeble attempt to get me to write papers for her
• Patricia Rockwell - What do I think of the Hadron Collider
• Shakespeare - Start a poem or a short story in a session and see if commenters will continue it
• Shakespeare - "What would I do when..." blog - not sure if she meant me to start another blog or just do this periodically.

And thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday.

Now, enough dilly-dallying... Bring on the quotes.

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.
-- Frank Tyger

Me, I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for. Because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.
-Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

All sunshine makes a desert.
-Arabic Proverb

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
-Stephen Crane

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
- Booker T. Washington

With great power comes great responsibility.
- Stan Lee

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
- Tony Benn

If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.
- Garrison Keillor

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth — that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
- H. L. Mencken

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

Money is a good servant but a bad master.
-French Proverb

There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
-Mark Twain

Painting is easy when you don’t know how but very difficult when you do.
-Edgar Degas [Ed. This applies to writing as well.]

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation.
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton

If lawyers had been present on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments would have twelve hundred amendments, all summing to the conclusion: The rich may ignore the rules, the poor will be hanged if they violate the smallest subordinate clause.
-Robert Anton Wilson

Only the madman is absolutely sure.
-Robert Anton Wilson

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Humor

What the hell! I watched John Pinette last night. He totally cracks me up. So, inspired by that, I thought I'd give everyone some humor for the weekend. Today, apparently, I happened upon a stash of insults.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.
- Thomas Carlyle

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
- George Bernard Shaw

Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.
- Mark Twain

No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he's a dirty little beast.
- W. S. Gilbert

There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.
- Mark Twain

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look ridiculous year after year.
- Fred Allen

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
- William Dean Howells

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
- Catherine Aird

Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.
- Heinrich Heine

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
- Thomas Brackett Reed

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
- Groucho Marx

What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement.
- Fred Allen

I used to keep my college room mate from reading my personal mail by hiding it in her textbooks.
- Joan Welsh

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
- George Bernard Shaw

You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not have been naturally so stupid.
- Samuel Johnson

You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
- Edward Flaherty

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
- Alexander Pope

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

He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.
- Samuel Butler

He's as big as a gorilla and as strong as a gorilla. If he was as smart as a gorilla he'd be fine.
- Sam Bailey

Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.
- Zenna Schaffer

There are three stages of man: He believes in Santa Claus; he doesn't believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
- Bob Philips

An extravagance is anything you buy that is of no earthly use to your wife.
- Franklin Adams

It doesn't make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
- Mrs. Patrick Campbell

I've had them both, and I don't think much of either.
- Beatrix Lehmann, watching a Hollywood wedding

In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.
- Charles, Count Talleyrand

She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.
- Robertson Davies

There goes the famous good time that was had by all.
- Bette Davis

She should get a divorce and settle down.
- Jack Parr

That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
- Dorothy Parker

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Saturday Quotathon: Science

Because, well, why not. I am a rocket scientist after all.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
-Albert Einstein

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.
- Niels Bohr

Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.
- Euripides

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
- David Hume

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 sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
- Alfred Whitney Griswold

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is.
- Carl Jung

Discoveries are oftem made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.
-Frank Tyger

Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you; you must acquire it.
-Sudie Black

A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth... Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all.
-Ethan Allen

It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
-Robert Anton Wilson

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. –
Werner Heisenberg

Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.
-Enrico Fermi

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.
-Bruce Lee

Even if I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
-Douglas Adams

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
--Albert Einstein

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
- Mark Russell

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
--Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 8, 1952

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
--Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Blues for a Red Planet)

Arthur C. Clarke’s First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."

One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.
-Robert Heinlein “Life Line”

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.
-Christopher Reeve

I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
-Wernher Von Braun

One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions.
-Wernher Von Braun

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.
-Seth Lloyd

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
-Nikola Tesla

What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
-Dave Barry

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
-Dave Barry

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.
-Dave Barry

I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.
-Louis Pasteur

I have more, of course, but this is long enough for today.

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Saturday Quotathon: Chivalry

In honor of what I and Merriam Webster think chivalry ought to be, I'm looking for quotes that involve honor, generosity and courtesy.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.
-Gautama Buddha

I am disinclined to aquiesce to your request. Means no.
-Barbossa from Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl

For the sake of the flowers, the weeds are watered.
-Arabic Proverb

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
- George Bernard Shaw

The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Where there is great love there are always miracles.
- Willa Cather

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
- Freeman Dyson

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
- Mahatma Gandhi

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.
- Muhammad

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
- Thomas Paine

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.
-William Osler, M.D.

Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that’s really where you wish they were.
-George E. Bergman

Treat a child as though he already is the person he’s capable of becoming.
-Haim Ginott

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
-Steve Jobs

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
-Mahatma Gandhi

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut."
- Lawrence Lessig

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass doorknob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-Mark Twain [not mean, but funny]

Be kind - Remember every one you meet is fighting a battle - everybody's lonesome.
--Marion Parker

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
--Welsh Proverb

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
--Samuel Johnson

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
-Aristotle

'But we should kill him!'
'No. You've been listen to Brocando too often,' said Bane.
Brocando bristled. 'You know what he is! Why not kill--' he began, but he was interrupted.
'Because it doesn't matter what he is. It matters what we are.'
-Terry Pratchett

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
-Booker T. Washington

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
- Robert A. Heinlein

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.
- Philip José Farmer

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Saturday Quotathon: Science

In honor of my spot of science yesterday, here are some quotes loosely connected with same.

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.
--Joe Moore

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
--Mark Twain

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams

But make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last.
-- Robert M. Pyle

Development is when you know the answer, but not how to get there. Applied research is when you know the question, but not the answer. Pure research is when you don't know the question.
-- Nick MacLaren

Do not look directly into laser beam with remaining eye.
-- Sign in Sandia Labs

Her terrible tale
You can't assail,
With truth it quite agrees:
A taste exact
For faultless fact
Amounts to a disease.
-- W.S. Gilbert

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'.
-- Michael McClary

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.
-- Sir Edmund Hillary

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.
-Albert Einstein

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.
-T.H. Huxley

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
- Niels Bohr

In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
- Louis Pasteur

If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties.
- Marcus Aurelius

Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
- Richard Feynman

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
- Karl Popper

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.
- Enrico Fermi

A small bottle containing urine sat upon the desk of Sir William Osler, the eminent professor of medicine at Oxford University. Sitting before him was a class full of young, wide-eyed medical students, listening to his lecture on the importance of observing details. To emphasize his point, he announced: "This bottle contains a sample for analysis. It's often possible by tasting it to determine the disease from which the patient suffers." / He then dipped a finger into the fluid and brought it into his mouth. He continued speaking: "Now I am going to pass the bottle around. Each of you please do exactly as I did. Perhaps we can learn the importance of this technique and diagnose the case." / The bottle made its way from row to row, each student gingerly poking his finger in and bravely sampling the contents with a frown. Dr. Osler then retrieved the bottle and startled his students by saying, "Gentlemen, now you will understand what I mean when I speak about details. Had you been observant, you would have seen that I put my index finger in the bottle but my middle finger into my mouth!"

Osler seems like a good place to stop.

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Saturday Quotathon: Reality

I was thinking about that driving while texting video, which was apparently put together by a little police department in Wales, because I read this editorial - and because the video really grabbed my attention. Now, first, now that I realize that a police department put this together (along with 26 other minutes of film) for $20K, I'm even more impressed, but I'm disgusted in many ways with some of the reactions to it, at least on this side of the pond.

According to this editorial, many are dismayed at the graphic nature and think kids won't be impressed by that. They suggest humor as a way to keep kids from texting. Yeah, good luck with that. Actually, to be honest, I'm impressed because this film emphasizes what is often lost in many driving videos - you're not just putting yourself at risk. The texting/driving girl is injured and clearly traumatized, but you see the devastation she caused. Her friends in her car are dead or badly injured (one is clearly dead). There are parents that may be dead with a little girl screaming for them in the back seat in another car. There's a baby who will never wake up.

Young people have a tendency to think they're immortal. In my opinion, this video is effective because it reminds us that our own immortality isn't all we have to worry about. And there are some things any reasonable person doesn't want to live with. If a kid doesn't care about anybody, it won't affect them. But it made an impression on my daughter. I think it's brilliant.

On that note, I'm going for quotes in line with what I saw in that video and how I felt about it. The first one I found is ironic.

As a teenager you are in the last stage of life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you.
--Fran Lebowitz

A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defense.
--Joe Moore

Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.
--Solomon Short

Everyone is entitled to an informed opinion.
-- Harlan Ellison

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
--Albert Einstein

Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.
-Aldous Huxley

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
–James Baldwin

Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end; there it is.
-Winston Churchill

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
-Helen Keller

What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.
-From Groundhog Day

I'm listening. [Elizabeth holds a gun to his face] I'm listening intently.
-Lord Becket from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest

Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, "I drank what?"
-Chris Knight from Real Genius

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.
-Peter Sellers [apparently, Peter Sellers did not agree with me]

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.
-Selma Hayak

Seek counsel of him who makes you weep, and not of him who makes you laugh.
-Arabic Proverb

Half-truth is more dangerous than falsehood.
-Bengali Proverb

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been.
- William Hazlitt

That'll do. Interesting that I always have more pertinent quotes than I think I do.

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Saturday Quotations: Humanity/Talent and Artificial Intelligence/Technology

Basically, it has to seem in sync with my subjects the past three days...to me. Seemed appropriate. Now, let's look in my bag of quotes...

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
--Elbert Hubbard

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.
--Aldous Huxley

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
-- Lou Holtz

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

A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
-- Admiral Arthur W. Radford

Chance favors the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

Designing an object to be simple and clear takes at least twice as long as the usual way. It requires concentration at the outset on how a clear and simple system would work, followed by the steps required to make it come out that way -- steps which are often much harder and more complex than the ordinary ones. It also requires relentless pursuit of that simplicity even when obstacles appear which would seem to stand in the way of that simplicity.
-- T.H. Nelson

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.
-- Robert Half

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
-- General Omar N. Bradley

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
-- Stephen W. Hawking

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown

Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.
-- Freeman Teague, Jr.

One is more admired for claiming to do good than for proving to be right.
-- R. Emmett Tyrrell

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

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play.
-- Carl Orff

The reactor constructors claim that they have devoted more effort to safety problems than any other technologists have. This is true. From the beginning, they have paid much attention to safety and they have been remarkably clever in devising safety precautions. This is…not relevant. If a problem is too difficult to solve, one cannot claim that it is solved by pointing to all the efforts made to solve it.
--Hannes Alfven, Nobel laureate physicist

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
-George Bernard Shaw

Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.
-Albert Einstein

Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
-Pete Seeger

Shigure: Perfect, now why don't you heat that up for us, Yuki?
Yuki: You're kidding, right?
Shigure: Of course, you're not too handy in the kitchen, are you? Well, Kyo, I guess that leaves you.
Kyo: Why do I gotta do it?
Shigure: No, No, it's alright. If you don't mind letting the last of the wonderful beef stew that Tohru put her heart and soul into preparing for us get burnt to a crisp, than neither do I. After all, I suppose burnt beef stew would be just as satisfying as burnt miso soup or burnt rice or burnt eggs or any of the fine burnt dishes Yuki used to make for use before Tohru fell into our lives. Ah well, we all seemed to do quite well on our charcoal-rich diet and I'm sure there's no reason why we won't grow accustomed to it again.
-From Fruits Basket (anime)

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.
-From 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.
-From Mostly Harmless

Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
-From Ghostbusters

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
- Niels Bohr

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
-William Osler, M.D.

Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
-Dr. Joyce Brothers

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
-Oprah Winfrey

I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.
-Douglas Adams

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
--George Patton

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.
-James A. Michener, attributed

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
--Will Rogers, New York Times Aug. 31 1924

I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' And Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.'
- Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992

Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.
- Carl von Clausewitz, 1780 – 1831

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Assumptions and Stubbornness

Ah, the old presupposed notions and the inability to see past one's own view. Ah, I've got a bunch of these....I think.

Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.
--Baltasar Gracián

Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
--Sydney J. Harris

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
--Aldous Huxley

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

Life is so unlike theory.
--Anthony Trollope

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
--Mark Twain

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill

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

Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?'
-- Margaret Maron

God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
-- Sir William Bragg

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo

Ignorance is the mother of presumption.
-- Marie de Gournay

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
-- Charles Darwin

I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Information cannot argue with a closed mind.
-- Elaine May

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
-- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
-- William G. McAdoo

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
-- John Von Neumann, 1949

Nothing is improbable until it moves into the past tense.
-- George Ade

Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
-- Werner Heisenberg

Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science. Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller

One must always tell what one sees. Above all, which is more difficult, one must always see what one sees.
-- Charles Pierre Péguy

Science is built with facts as a house is with stones -- but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
-- Jules Henri Poincarxiée

Scientists, especially when they leave the particular field in which they have specialized, are just as ordinary, pig-headed and unreasonable as anybody else, and their unusually high intelligence makes their prejudices all the more dangerous.
-- H.J Eysenck

Scientists often have a naive faith that if only they could discover enough facts about a problem, these facts would somehow arrange themselves in a compelling and true solution.
-- Theodosius Dobzhansky

Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.
-- Georg Lichtenberg

Sometimes the best way to convince someone he is wrong is to let him have his way.
-- Red O'Donnell

“Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.”
-The Social Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau

It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.
-Albert Einstein

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
-Nikola Tesla

Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
"Oh good," said Arthur.
"We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
"Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
-From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I have more, but this is long enough for today.

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Change

Hey, I got a request and a good one. So, for Relax Max, here are some quotes on change. I’m working from an older version of my quote file, so forgive me if I accidentally have a repeat here.

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
--Sydney J. Harris

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
--Aldous Huxley

I wake up each morning determined to change the World and also to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes that makes planning the day a little difficult.
--E.B. White

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
-- James Baldwin

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
-- William O. Douglas

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.
--Sir Francis Bacon

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.
--Niccolò Machiavelli

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)
--Carl Sagan

Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
-- William Jennings Bryan

Never mistake motion for action.
-- Ernest Hemingway

NO BRAINER, n. A decision which, viewed through the retrospectoscope, is "obvious" to those who failed to make it originally.

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, "I don't know", then it becomes possible to get at the truth.
-Robert Heinlein

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
-Robert Heinlein

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
-Albert Einstein

Mr. Newberry: So, what have you been doing with your life?
Martin: Um... professional killer.
Mr. Newberry: Ah, good for you! It's a growth industry
-From Gross Pointe Blank

Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker — he, however, is the creator. Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses — and not herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh — those who grave new values on new tables.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
-Arthur Koestler

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
-E. L. Doctorow

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Saturday Quotathon: Politics, Politicians and Patriotism

In honor of the holiday...

In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of the tiger ended up inside.
--John F. Kennedy

People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence.
--Henry Kissinger

How perilous it is to free a people who prefer slavery.
--Niccolò Machiavelli

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
--Ronald Reagan

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
--Adlai Stevenson

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through.
--Jonathon Swift

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
--Mark Twain

I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
--Woodrow Wilson

After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
-- Italian Proverb

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun

Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
-- Daniele Vare

So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon our society than the others.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

He who stops being better stops being good.
-- Oliver Cromwell

If you're not making waves, you're not underway.
-- Admiral Chester Nimitz

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.
-- Camillo di Cavour

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has no equality. Its sovereign law is subordination and dependence.
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
-- Giordano Bruno

Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
-- William Jennings Bryan

No one ever excused his way to success.
-- David de Dotto

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
-- Jacob Bronowski

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
-- William Penn

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
Since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
-- Viktor Frankl

Experience is the best teacher, but only a fool would choose to learn at the school of experience.
--Ben Franklin

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.
-George Bernard Shaw

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
-Albert Einstein

If you are going through hell, keep going.
-Winston Churchill

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-Abraham Lincoln

The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past.
- Gore Vidal

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S. Truman

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
- Malcolm X

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
- Martin Luther King

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
- Thomas Paine

Between individuals, as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.
- Benito Juárez

By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
-Henry Clay

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.
-Alexander Hamilton

If I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet.
-Andrew Johnson

Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?
-Leó Szilárd

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

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
-Margaret Thatcher

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
- Boris Yeltsin

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken

Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
- Harry S. Truman on Richard Nixon

History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford, and Nixon-See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil.
- Robert J. Dole, speech, 1983

A Member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

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Saturday Quotathon: Family and Ancestors

It's Father's Day so let's make today's quotes all about family. And, if you still have your father (I do not), let him know how you feel about him.

I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.
- Irving Brecher

The idea of Prince Charles conversing with vegetables is not quite so amusing when you remember that he's had plenty of practice chatting to members of his own family.
- Jaci Stephens

I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.
- Johnny Frank Garrett, Sr., executed by injection, Texas

The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice.
--Doug Larsen

My grandson, 22 years old, keeps complaining about headaches, I've told him a thousand times, Larry, when you get out of bed, it's feet first.
--Henny Youngman

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
-- Anne Bradstreet

I hate to do it, but it looks like I'm going to have to file a big lawsuit against my parents for turning me into a pathetic, spoiled, whiney-ass, refuse-to-take-responsibility crybaby.
-- Ken Gacioch

Making the decision to have a child is momentous -- it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
-- Elizabeth Stone

Man is still the best computer that we can put aboard a spacecraft -- and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor.
-- Wernher Von Braun

Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.
-- Ivern Ball

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
-- Greek proverb

Ayame: (Takes Yuki's hand in his) Yuki, while I'm here this is the PERFECT chance for us to deepen our bond as brothers-
Yuki: I have a better idea- why don't I drown you in the lake?
Ayame: Anything you want, as long as it gives us some quality time together!
Yuki: On second thought, go drown yourself!
-From Fruits Basket anime

Mel: Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anybody would miss you.
-From Clueless

Willie Wang: Pop?
Sidney Wang: Yeah?
Willie Wang: Who do you think is the murderer?
Sidney Wang: Must sleep on it. Will know in morning when wake up.
Willie Wang: What if you don't wake up?
Sidney Wang: Then you did it.
-From Murder by Death

Chris Knight: I'm sorry, but have you ever seen a body like this before in your life?
David Decker: She happens to be my daughter.
Chris Knight: Oh. Then I guess you have.
-From Real Genius

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- Gautama Buddha

Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers.
- Muhammad

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.
-William Osler, M.D.

A great teacher never strives to explain his vision—he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.
-The Rev. R. Inman

There can only be peace when they will start to love their children more than they hate us.
-Golda Meir

I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as "The Boneless Wonder". My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see the The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.
- Winston Churchill, on Ramsay MacDonald

Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee later than others.
- Kin Hubbard

I miss you, Dad.

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Self-Deception

In honor of my frisbee match with Relax Max...

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
--Gustave Flaubert

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion -- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
--Robert Heinlein

Experience teaches only the teachable.
--Aldous Huxley

You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
--Jean Kerr

Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
--Abraham Lincoln

You can shoot the tiger, or stay out of his way, but you cannot pronounce him a vegetarian.
--Richard Mitchell

The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong.
--Addison Mizner

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
--George Orwell

It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.
--Jawaharlal Nehru

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
--Bertrand Russell

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based -- or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug -- it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.
--Carl Sagan

The fact that you are just dying to believe something is not hard evidence -- except perhaps about your state of mind.
--Thomas Sowell

He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.
--Anthony Trollope

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
--Mark Twain

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
--Bill Vaughan

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
-- Edward Teller

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
-- John Cage

A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written.
-- Isaac Asimov

Fancies may be as you please but facts are as the Universe pleases.
-- Robert Kaplan

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.
-- Robert Southey

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
-- Laurens van der Post

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Philosophies

I don't think I have to explain it. (You don't really think I have a method to my madness, do you?)

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
--Sydney J. Harris

Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun -- and neither can stop the march of events.
--Robert Heinlein

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
--Elbert Hubbard

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
--Aldous Huxley

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.
--Henrik Ibsen

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.
--Robert Green Ingersol

Truth is, indeed, not often welcome for its own sake; it is generally unpleasing, because contrary to our wishes and opposite to our practice; and, as our attention naturally follows our interest, we hear unwillingly what we are afraid to know, and soon forget what we have no inclination to impress upon our memories.
--Samuel Johnson

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
--John F. Kennedy

Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
--Doug Larsen

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
--Abraham Lincoln

No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
--H.L. Mencken

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interest.
--John Stuart Mill

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
--Michel de Montaigne

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
--P.J. O’Rourke

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you insane. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
--George Orwell

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.
--Sir William Osler

Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
--Thomas Paine

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.
--William Penn

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
--Jawarharlal Nehru

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
--Montesquieu

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