Waldvogel & Aschwanden
Some of my favorite quotes
This is my small collection of random, unsorted quotes which appealed to me at the time I read them. I do not agree with all these quotes, some of these are here as bad examples.Others have also collected quotes.
What if you slept?
And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a
strange and beautiful flower?
And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, then we would be so dumb not to understand it.
Albert Knag in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World
The human brain ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity — the rest is overhead for the operating system.
Anonymous sign in a pre-1971 computing center;
cited in
Gerald M. Weinberg:
The Psychology of Computer Programming
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
Edward V. Berard: Life-Cycle Approaches, in Essays on Object-Oriented Software Engineering
I always tried to prove that integrated systems perform better
than segregated systems.
It turned out to be hard to prove.
The reason that it's hard to prove is that it's wrong.
Harry Rudin (hr@zurich.ibm.com)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
Two rules of success in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
Source Unknown
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean some one isn't out to get you...
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
U.S. General William Westmoreland
Life is a sexually transmitted, terminal disease.
Source Unknown
You can fool all of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time,
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln
The NSA regularly lies to people who ask it for advice on export control. They have no reason not to; accomplishing their goal by any legal means is fine by them. Lying by government employees is legal.
John Gilmore (gnu@toad.com)
In cyberspace everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes.
Graham Greenleaf (g.greenleaf@unsw.edu.au)
I'm starting to believe that more evil can be done in the name of "protecting our children" than with any other excuse.
Declan McCullaugh (declan@well.com)
Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.
Salman Rushdie
Microsoft is for computer what McDonald's is for fine food
Martin Wunderli (Martin.Wunderli@jungle.ch)
valve logic (translated as toob logic for those separated by a common language)
Peter Hesketh (pbh@phesk.demon.co.uk)
Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft?
Christine Comaford (PC Week, 9/27/95)
World Wide Web Edition, Published Bioccasionally
Make yourself Count... Become a statistic.
In God we trust. Everybody else we verify using PGP!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Bravery, he'd figured, was really just fear of cowardice.
Britt Godfrey in Rebel Moon by Bruce Bethke and Vox Day
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Source Unknown
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
We build systems like the Wright Brothers built airplanes — build the whole thing, push it off a cliff, let it crash, and start over again.
R. M. Graham
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
Barry LePatner
Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
One can write Fortran in any language.
[Talking about unreadable/badly written code]
Harlan Rosenthal (rosenthh@dialogic.com)
BTW, I learned a lovely new acronym today:
"Law Enforcement Agency Key" - LEAK.
Charles H. Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Most unsettling of all is this: the content of television is not a vision but a manufactured data stream that can be sanitized to 'protect' or impose cultural values. Thus we are confronted with an addictive and all-pervasive drug that delivers an experience whose message is whatever those who deal the drug wish it to be.
Terence McKenna in Jay Hanson's Food of the Gods
Reicher Mann, armer Mann
standen da und sahn sich an.
Und der Arme sagte bleich:
Wär ich nicht arm, wärst du nicht reich
Bertold Brecht
When they took the 4th amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the 2nd amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the 1st amendment and I can say nothing about it.
UNIX is user-friendly.
(It just isn't promiscuous about which users it is friendly
with.)
Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege.
A Thinking Man's Creed for Crypto, Vin McLellan
The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.
Peter O'Toole
Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
Niels Bohr
To err is human, to moo bovine.
We are quite confident that all of our systems are Year 2000 Compliant. However, we have over a two year backlog of Year 2000 Compliance forms to fill out, so according to our scheduling database, you should hear back from us in June, 1900.
From history we learn that we don't learn anything from history.
Source Unknown, got it from Tony Svanstrom
Photons have neither morals nor visas.
620 Mbps (a gigabit after federal taxes)
If we set up a system that is optimized for surveillance, this government may not and probably won't use it. But then another government comes to power, one that sees the potential to use their 'keys' to destroy their opponents. It could be the last government we ever elect.
Anyone who offers himself for election under a democratic system automatically disqualifies himself, because those who crave ower are those least fitted to wield it.
Donald Michael
Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
Source Unknown
Always think very hard before messing with TCP. And then don't.
First they came for the Socialists, and I didn't speak up,
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up,
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I
wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I
was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to
speak up for me.
Martin Niemöller (other, versions of this poem)
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.
Julius Charles Hare
Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Markets are amoral. But society cannot live without morality.
Markets are justifiable famous for their efficiency, but that efficiency has only one goal—maximizing the return on investment. Commercial Markets are not capable of meeting any need that cannot be turned into a commodity for sale at a profit.
Steven E. Miller (in: Cilicizing Cyberspace. Policy, Power, and the Information Superhighway)
Backup systems are designed to violate file permissions.
In 5 years, the question will not be, "do we have that file?", instead, "how do we synchronize the 5000 copies of it?"
Daniel E. Geer (December 2002)
You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that
John von Neumann (Princeton, 1948)
Researchers use word processors to write papers, because it allows them to right-justify ideas that cannot otherwise be justified.
Adiseshu Hari
There's never money to do it right, but always money to do it again ... and again ... and again ... and again
Always make new mistakes.
Esther Dyson
Other nice link collections
- Mary P. Van Sell also has a bigger collection of quotes and other stuff.
- Another nice collection was prepared by Bert Nitsche (about half are in German, half in English).
- James Sterbenz also has some nice quotes.
- Özgür Erçetin has a list of research-related quotes.
- Lists of proverbs are available courtesy of UCLA and NonStopEnglish.