Quotations

Too many people -- some of them judges -- seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.
-Thomas Sowell

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. People say this to you with a straight face, and I always say, "Who. Wants. Flies?"
- Bill Murray

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
-George Orwell.

A fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.
-Aldous Huxley

The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Beware the fury of a patient man. -John Dryden, 1681

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.
-Aldous Huxley

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are the legislators.
-P.J. O'Rourke

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

Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.
-David Borenstein

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.
-Andre Dubus

The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.
-Albert Einstein

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not by years but by disposition is wisdom aquired.
-Plautus 254(?)-184 BC

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
-Stephen Hawking

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
-Albert Einstein

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.
-Michael Konda

I never let schooling interfere with my education.
-Mark Twain

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
-Lincoln

I have no money, no resources, no hopes.
I am the happiest man alive.
-Henry Miller

Americans always try to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else.
- Winston Churchill

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge, 1932

"No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
-Thomas Jefferson

Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald.
Chinese Proverb

It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that is the way to bet.
Damon Runyan

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.
Winston Churchill

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
Al Capone (1899-1947)

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
Alfred E. Wiggam

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
William James (1842-1910)

One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ...
-- Anthony Chevins

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened by the old ones.
John Cage

Callin' it your job don't make it right, boss.
(Cool Hand) Luke Jackson

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them…
-Albert Einstein

If you think of yourself as a decent, rational person, and you support the war on drugs, then you are misinformed...either about the war or about your decency and rationality.
-- Ray Aldridge

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Michael McKean is a veteran comedian and character actor known for his parts in This Is Spinal Tap, Laverne & Shirley, and A Mighty Wind.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Michael McKean: There is something at the center of everything that is, in the vaguest possible terms, an intelligence. I've seen evidence of it all my life, and I think that even the notion of trying to interpret something that grand is absurd. So, that's just it: The answer is yes and I'm not smart enough to get my mind around it.

The Onion: Is there a God?
George Carlin: No. No, there's no God, but there might be some sort of an organizing intelligence, and I think to understand it is way beyond our ability. It's certainly not a judgmental entity. It's certainly not paternalistic and all these qualities that have been attributed to God. It's probably a dispassionate... That's why I say, "Suppose He doesn't give a shit? Suppose there is a God but He just doesn't give a shit?" That's the kind of thing that might be at work.

Australian actor Guy Pearce has appeared in L.A. Confidential and Rules Of Engagement.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Guy Pearce: Uh, yeah, absolutely. [Pauses.] Do you want to know His name, or...? I just think it's within everybody; it's the connection that everybody has together, you know? I think that's what the power is.
O: So you don't think there's a spirit in the sky, but something that's inside all of us?
GP: Yeah, exactly. His name's Brian.

Ah, Eugénie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?
-Marquis de Sade

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you fully understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
- Stephen Roberts

"The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity to defeat the enemy."
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c. 500bc

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
Khalil Gibran

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Brendon Behan

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole

A friend to all is a friend to none.
Aristotle

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Ingrid Bergman

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. Lao-Tzu

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan

Oscar Wilde:

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
-- Mark Twain

I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers.
Thomas Watson, IBM boss, 1943

Attack! Always attack!
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

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

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
--Samuel Adams

Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
-Gore Vidal

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"
-Adolf Hitler, 1935

"We talk far too much. We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches. That fig tree, this little snake, the cocoon on my window sill quietly awaiting its future-all these are momentous signatures. A person able to decipher their meaning properly would soon be able to dispense with the written or the spoken word altogether. The more I think of it, there is something futile, mediocre, even (I am tempted to say) foppish about speech. By contrast, how the gravity of Nature and her silence startle you, when you stand face to face with her, undistracted, before a barren ridge or in the desolation of the ancient hills."
- Goethe

Martin: What's that one?
Quint: What?
Martin: That one, there, on your arm?
Quint: Ah, well. It's a tattoo. I got that removed.
Hooper: Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Mother. Ha ha ha! What is it?
Quint: Mr. Hooper, that's the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Martin: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know. `Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like `ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosom's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He'd a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
Martin: What's that?
Hooper: It's a whale.
Quint: . Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain.

Stupid Lists

TOP 6 REASONS WHY COMPUTERS MUST BE FEMALE.

As soon as you have one, a better one is just around the corner.
No one but the creator understands the internal logic.
Even your smallest mistakes are immediately committed to memory for future reference.
The native language used to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
The message "Bad Command or File Name" is about as informative as "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not going to tell you"
As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half of your paycheck on accessories for it.

Why it's Great to be a Man . . .

You can kill your own food
Phone conversations last only 30 seconds
You know lots of useful stuff about tanks and airplanes
A five day vacation requires only one suitcase
Bathroom lines are 80% shorter
You can open all your own jars
Old friends don't care if you've lost or gained weight
When clicking through the channels you don't have to stop on every shot of someone crying
You can go to the bathroom alone
Your last name stays put
You can leave a hotel room bed unmade
The garage is all yours
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness
You see the humor in "Terms of Endearment"
You can be showered and ready in 10 minutes
Wedding plans take care of themselves
If someone forgets to invite you to something, they can still be your friend
Your underwear costs $7.50 for a pack of 3
None of your coworkers have the power to make you cry
You don't have to shave below your neck
You don't have to curl up next to some big, hairy guy every night
If you're 34 and single, no one notices
Chocolate is just another snack
You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger seat
Flowers and/or Duct Tape fix everything
You never have to worry about anyone else's feelings
Three pair of shoes are more than enough
You can say anything and not worry about what people think
You can whip your shirt off on a hot day
Car mechanics tell you the truth
You don't care if someone doesn't notice your new haircut
You can watch a game in silence for hours without your buddy thinking "He must be mad at me"
One mood, all the time, 24/7
You can admire Clint Eastwood without having to starve yourself to look like him
Gray hair and wrinkles add character
Wedding dress $2,000 -- Tux rental $85 bucks
You don't care if someone is talking behind your back
You don't pass on the dessert and then mooch off someone else's
The remote is yours and yours alone
You need not pretend you're "freshening up" when you go to the bathroom
If you don't call your buddy when you said you would, he won't tell your friends that you've "changed"
If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you might become lifelong buddies
The occasional well-rendered belch is expected
If something mechanical didn't work, you can bash it with a hammer and throw it across the room
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet
You think the idea of punting that small, ankle-biting dog is funny
If you retain water, it is in a canteen
Flushing the toilet is optional
Christmas shopping can be accomplished for 25 people on the day before Christmas and be done in 45 minutes.

Signs That You've Had Too Much Of The '90s:

You try to enter your password on the microwave.
You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
You e-mail your buddy who works at the desk next to you.
You chat several times a day with a stranger from South America, but you haven't spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.
Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.
You hear most of your jokes via email instead of in person.
When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally insert a "9"to get an outside line.
You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
Your company's welcome sign is attached with Velcro.
Your resume is on a diskette in your pocket.
You really get excited about a 1.7% pay rise.
You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news.
Your biggest loss from a system crash was when you lost all of your best jokes.
Your supervisor doesn't have the ability to do your job.
Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.
Board members salaries are higher than all the Third World countries annual budgets combined
It's dark when you drive to and from work, even in the summer.
You know exactly how many days you've got left until you retire.
Interviewees, despite not having the relevant knowledge or experience, terminate the interview when told of the starting salary.
You see a good looking, smart person and you know it must be a visitor.
Free food left over from meetings is your staple diet.
Your supervisor gets a brand-new state-of-the-art laptop with all the latest features, while you have time to go for lunch while yours boots up.
Being sick is defined as you can't walk or you're in the hospital.
You're already late on the assignment you just got.
There's no money in the budget for the five permanent staff your department is short of, but they can afford four full-time management consultants advising your boss's boss on strategy.
Vacation time is something you roll over to next year.
Every week another brown collection envelope comes around because someone you DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WORKED THERE is leaving.
Your relatives and family describe your job as "works with computers".
The only reason you recognize your kids is because their pictures are on your desk.
You only have makeup for fluorescent lighting.

If Men Ruled the World

Any fake phone number a girl gave you would automatically forward your call to her real number.
Nodding and looking at your watch would be deemed an acceptable response to "I love you."
Hallmark would make "Sorry, what was your name again?" cards.
When your girlfriend really needed to talk to you during the game, she would appear in a little box in the corner of the screen during a time-out.
Birth control would come in ale or lager.
Each year, your raise would be pegged to the fortunes of the NFL team of your choice.
The funniest guy in the office would get to be CEO.
"Sorry I'm late, but I got hammered last night" would be an acceptable excuse for tardiness.
At the end of the workday, a whistle would blow and you'd jump out your window and slide down the tail of a brontosaurus and right into your car.
It'd be considered harmless fun to gather 30 friends, put on horned helmets, and go pillage a nearby town.
Tanks would be far easier to rent.
Instead of beer belly, you'd get "beer biceps."
Instead of an expensive engagement ring, you could present your wife-to-be with a giant foam hand that said, "You're #1!"
Valentine's Day would be moved to February 29th so it would only occur in leap years.
On Groundhog Day, if you saw your shadow, you'd get the day off to go drinking. Mother's Day, too. St. Patrick's Day, however, would remain exactly the same. But it would be celebrated every month.
Cops would be broadcast live, and you could phone in advice to the pursuing cops. Or to the crooks.
Two words: ALLY MCNAKED.
Regis and Kathie Lee would be chained to a cement mixer and pushed off the Golden Gate Bridge for the most lucrative pay-per-view event in world history.
The victors in any athletic competition would get to kill and eat the losers.
The only show opposite Monday Night Football would be Monday Night Football from a Different Camera Angle.
It would be perfectly legal to steal a sports car, as long as you returned it the following day with a full tank of gas.
Every man would get four real "Get Out of Jail Free" cards per year.
When a cop gave you a ticket, every smart-aleck answer you responded with would actually reduce your fine. As in:
Cop: "You know how fast you were going?"
You: "All I know is, I was spilling my beer all over the place."
Cop: "Nice one. That's $10 off."
Faucets would run "Hot," "Cold," and "100 proof." The Statue of Liberty would get a bright red, 40-foot thong.
People would never talk about how fresh they felt.
Daisy Duke shorts would never again go out of style.
Telephones would automatically cut off after 30 seconds of conversation.

OXY-morons:

Act naturally
Found missing
Resident alien
Genuine imitation
Airline Food
Good grief
Same difference
Almost exactly
Government organization
Sanitary landfill
Alone together
Legally drunk
American history
Living dead
Small crowd
Business ethics
Soft rock
Butt Head
Military Intelligence
New York culture
New classic
"Now, then ..."
Synthetic natural gas
Passive aggression
Taped live
Clearly misunderstood
Peace force
Extinct Life
Computer jock
Plastic glasses
Terribly pleased
Computer security
Political science
Tight slacks
Definite maybe
Pretty ugly
Twelve-ounce pound cake
Diet ice cream
Working vacation
Exact estimate

And the Number one top OXY-Moron

Microsoft Works

The Laws of Work

A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
The more junk you put up with, the more junk you are going to get.
You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to either of you the rest of the day.
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it
Keep your boss' boss off your boss' back.
Everything can be filed under "Miscellaneous".
To err is human, to forgive... is not our policy.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing.
Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
The people who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done. Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Work vs Prison

If Men Were to Rewrite "The Rules"

Anything we said six or eight months ago is inadmissible in an argument. All comments become null and void after seven days.
If you don't want to dress like Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.
If we say something that can be interpreted in two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other way.
It is in neither your best interest or ours to make us take those stupid Cosmo quizzes together.
Let us ogle. If we don't look at other women how can we know how pretty you are?
Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
You can either ask us to do something OR tell us how you want it done - not both.
Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials or time-outs.
Christopher Columbus didn't need directions and neither do we.
When we're turning the wheel and the car is nosing onto the off ramp, you saying "This is our exit" is not necessary.