"Poetry: ignoring literary rules for effect"
"The difference between strategy and tactics is the size of the explosion"
--Jacob Tanzman
"If I wanted your opinion I'd tell it to you"
"You're not going to go raise a lot of hell, are you?" " We can handle the hell we raise"
--Gunslinger Girl
"Mat is glad she didn't try to manipulate him and offered her supplies. She protested that she was sincere and not trying to manipulate him. He said that’s why he made the offer. "
"You should always be wary of those who favor you for no reason"
--Gunslinger Girl
"I don't want to regret doing nothing because of a future that may never come"
--Gurren Lagann
"I'm right, and if you disagree, I beat you up"
--TV Tropes
"Did you come here to gloat?" "No, I can gloat from a distance"
--The Mentalist
"think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?"
--Frank Kafka
"I don't like guns" "I don't like them much either, but I'd rather I have one then someone else"
"Millions of people can create lifelike pictures, but only one painted the Mona Lisa"
"How does it feel to be a murderer?" *takes out gun * "I don't know, lets find out"
"Gustibus non est disputandum - One should not argue over taste"
--Neal Stephenson
"Agnosticism: just in case"
"With great power comes great micromanagement. "
--House
"If you can't join them, beat them"
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device"
--David Langford
"No, wait, I've got it! Quick, stand next to me!" "Why?" "My name's in the title, I cant die! "
"... and it turned out it was the butler all along!" *GASP* "Gasp you should! "
--Archer
"First there was nothing, and then it exploded"
"If you're going to crazy, you'd better get paid for it or you're going to be locked up"
"The enemy of my friend is my enemy "
"I should have hit him if he had shot me through the brain"
--Andrew Jackson
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible"
--George Burns
"Do you think I'm stupid?" "Yes"
--The Mentalist
"Never kiss with a girl whose brothers have knife scars."
--Mat Cauthon
"Even the soundest of theories is subject to new data"
--Dexter Morgan
"You do know I punched the last person who pissed me off"
--Shed
"Homeopathy is the functional equivalent to doing fuck-all"
"People seem to get exponentially less healthy the more you stab them"
"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act"
--Tara Ploughman
"What if Hitler gave you a cheese sandwich? "
"Just be yourself." "people never like me when I'm myself. People like ties. How's my tie?"
--Tommy Jefferson
"Denial is the first stage of grief. Sometimes it's actually the only stage, when the person isn't actually sad"
"You cant buy silence, only rent it"
"How do you know when youre in love?" "When all the songs make sense"
--Castle
"Working to find new ways to procrastinate"
"Asking me why I want to write all this code is like asking a chef why they want to make all this tasty food, when you could just go out and buy it."
"I find that a duck's opinion of me depends on whether or not I have bread"
"Nostalgia isnt what it used to be"
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine"
"Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?"
"Youre such a good friend, if we were on a sinking ship with only one life jacket, Id miss you a lot"
"We dont need gun control, we need idiot control, which, coincidentally, happens to be guns"
"You do not need a parachute to skydive. You need a parachute to skydive twice"
"Some people say "If you can't beat them, join them". I say "If you can't beat them, beat them", because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise"
"I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarianI didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian"
"Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish"
"Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs"
"The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad"
"The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list"
"The purpose of babies is to replace us"
--Jerry Seinfeld
"There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them"
--Terry Pratchet
"I don't go with the flow; the flow goes with me."
"I don’t like spinach, but I don’t think spinach should therefore be forbidden"
--Jonas Kyratzes
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
--Bjarne Stroustrup
"A happy ending depends on where you end the story"
"If I'd asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"
--Henry Ford
"If at first you don't succeed, you fail."
"Why would you think that? Whats wrong with you?" "I feel fine!"
"Once I decided not to laugh at jokes just because they were trying to be funny. I haven't laughed in a year"
"I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong"
"Every crime is some sort if theft"
"Most people seem normal until you get to know them. They're liars"
"Nothing is written in stone, unless you write it in concrete"
"For my birthday I wished I were dead, and then everyone clapped"
"Thats not what Buddha meant!" "Did you know him?"
"Don't touch the bombs"
"None is more deaf than those who do not listen"
"I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design, which is a fancy way of saying ‘unemployable’"
"You can't escape descisions made for you"
"Diplomacy - the art of letting someone have your way"
"Screw this, I'm the programmer! "
"You are entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to the facts. You are also, when presented with both, entitled to choose one of them"
"A: Ever read Plato's Symposium?
B: Maybe in college...
A: Well do you remember anything about it?
B: No...
A: Then I guess you havent read Plato's Symposium"
"The student who is told the least learns the most"
"A group of people sat in a room somewhere and asked themselves, "What should students know by the time they finish this course?"; listed some concepts, vocabulary terms, snippets of code and provisional test questions; arranged them into "modules," swaths of exposition followed by exercises; then handed off the course, ready-made, to teachers who had no choice but to follow it to the letter"
"Being popular means you don't have to be nice"
"There's two types of laziness: the kind where people strive to do things in the most efficient way, and the kind where they strive not to do anything at all"
"Some people think faster than they talk, so they talk fast. Some people think slower than they talk, so they talk slowly. Other people think slower than they talk, so they dont think"
"Arent you tired of winning yet?" "Youd think so, but no"
"Why don't you skip to the part where you tell me what you want."
"That sounds like a personal problem"
"Knowledge comes before desire"
"1. Press button. 2. Run like hell. 3. In case of emergency: run faster"
"Jack of all trades, master of many"
"Only the weak desire peace, a wish even the strongest of men cannot attain"
"The mind is one of the few weapons that can be used against it's holder"
"A different interpretation of the truth"
"While it's true that Zulus thought guns were for wusses, they also thought that was a pretty hollow principle if they couldn't get their enemies to agree to it, so they had a few guns."
"I think it will work, but 47 tons of TNT isn't the sort of thing you can test easily"
--Nerd Cubed
"Everything has a price"
"If you're going to be a cripple, better to be a rich cripple"
"Nothing before the word but counts"
"If they were they same thing, there wouldn't be two different words for it"
"I'm a wiseass, not a jackass"
"Hell is other people. With vuvuzelas."
"I see the alcohol is playing keep away with your already lacking intelligence"
"Goodbye, its been real!" "Id certainly hope so!"
"Those who can't do teach"
"Marcin wasn't quite finished pissing in the face of death"
"These lasers can cut through rocks and burn hot enough to make air explode at the focus point. That's right: They can kill the air itself."
"Don't worry, this will only hurt a lot"
"You know the guy that I told you about, that they would hire if they found out, who would kill us and our kids without breaking a sweat? This is the guy they get to kill that guy"
"In laymen's terms this means, "fuck if we know.""
"The only way you could get the line questions honestly wrong is if you took two doses of LSD that morning and rubbed them directly on your eyeballs (which would have made for an even more awesome experiment, but we're getting off the point)."
"The odds are nearly infinity to one that we are all living in a computer simulation."
"If you wanted someone to agree with you, why didn't you ask me for a mirror, instead of my opinion?"
"I don't blame you for being you, but you can't blame me for hating it"
--Fall Out Boy
"didgeridont"
"To escape criticism, achieve nothing"
"The harder I work, the luckier I get."
"Bet you weren't expecting that one, god!"
"I'm better at evil plans than, you, if only because I don't tell my enemies my plans"
"Hangovers: the free prize at the bottom of every beer bottle"
"There's an ass for every seat, so now I have to stand up"
"Everything is relative"
"Take it easy now, lets not jump to conclusions!" "Im not"
"Speak loud for the ones who hate your guts"
"Raise your voice any time they try to shut you up"
"Louder than gods revolver and twice as shiny"
"If you were going light speed and looked backwards you wouldn't see anything"
"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see"
"The next test will deal with physics conservation through portals, if the laws of physics no longer apply in the post apocalyptic future, god help you"
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard"
--Linus Torvalds
"I'm going to attempt a manual override on this wall"
"Still, it's a better plan than exploding, marginally"
"The odds are a million to one, and that's with some generous rounding"
"The strongest among you may not wear a crown"
"How are you? I'm a potato"
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. "
"Everyone has a right to be an idiot, but I wish you wouldnt"
"There are no wrong choices, at least thats what they tell people who make bad choices"
--House
"Whatever you're doing, take it to the extreme"
"If two people aggree completely then one of them isn't necessary"
"If the opposite of pro is con what is the opposite of progress?"
"The root of culture is cult"
"Sanity is relative"
"Lots of people think I have tourettes, but I don't"
"Hope you're hungry: friendly question or cruel taunt?"
"Trust, but verify"
"You must be deaf dumb blind and dumb"
"100% of statistics are made up"
"Why is loyal to a fault a good thing?"
"Don't tell me what you think, tell me why you think it"
"Don't lie"
"They're already running low on passes, so if you haven't already got yours you're probably too late. Unless you have boobs. Boobs solve everything"
"Whos the lady with the log?" "We call her the log lady"
--Twin Peaks
"One of these centuries, the brutes, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force."
--Ayn Rand
"Be quiet! I'm asking the questions!" "I'm not answering them."
--Ayn Rand
"Dont make any false moves!" "I never do"
--Ayn Rand
"An adolescent bully about to utter that philosophical argument which is expressed by the sentence: I'll bash your teeth in."
--Ayn Rand
"Printing presses of the government treasury were running a race with starvation, and losing."
--Ayn Rand
"I'm afraid he's a man who's not open to a deal." "There's no such thing"
--Ayn Rand
"You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code."
--Ayn Rand
"We do not consider need a claim"
--Ayn Rand
"Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!"—"Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!"—"Don't argue, obey!"—"Don't try to understand, believe!"-—"Don't rebel, adjust!"—"Don't stand out, belong!"—"Don't struggle, compromise!"—"Your heart is more important than your mind!"—"Who are you to know? Your parents know best!"—"Who are you to know? Society knows best!"—"Who are you to object? All values are relative!"—"Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"
--Ayn Rand
"Do you have a better solution to offer?" "Sure," said Rearden easily. "If it's production that you want, then get out of the way, junk all of your damn regulations, let Orren Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel—and it will be pouring a thousand tons a day from every one of its sixty furnaces." "Oh, but . . . but we couldn't!" gasped Mouch. "That would be monopoly!" Rearden chuckled. "Okay," he said indifferently, "then let my mills superintendent buy it. Hell do a better job than Boyle." "Oh, but that would be letting the strong have an advantage over the weak! We couldn't do that!" "Then don't talk about saving the country's economy."
--Ayn Rand
"Don't try to tell me what I'm going to think. Give me the facts."
--Ayn Rand
"My teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I answered: "Happy" She told I didnt understand the question. I told her she didnt understand life"
--Ayn Rand
"Those who had once simpered: "I don't want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they'll never miss it!"—then, later, had snapped: "The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they've amassed enough to last them for three generations"—then, later, had yelled: "Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?"—now were screaming: "Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?"
--Ayn Rand
"I can't bring men down to their knees in admiration—but I can bring them down to their knees."
--Ayn Rand
"his life's too short to have to notice your existence." "He'd notice it, if you bashed him over the head with a club!" "I'm not too sure. He'd merely blame himself for not having moved out of the club's reach. "
--Ayn Rand
"Justice- people getting what they deserve"
"I'd like to help you—not because you suffer, but because you haven't deserved to suffer."
--Ayn Rand
"Honest people are never nervous about the matter of being trusted"
--Ayn Rand
"That's what you think"
--Ayn Rand
"They were not fighting over what to do, but over whom to blame."
--Ayn Rand
"Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right, but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own"
--Ayn Rand
"The king is dead, long live the king"
--Ayn Rand
"Do not teach by telling, teach by showing."
--Ayn Rand
"We do not tell—we show. We do not claim—we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw—we can help you to name it, but not to accept it—the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."
--Ayn Rand
"Aren't you training a man who could become your most dangerous competitor?" "That's the only sort of men I like to hire."
--Ayn Rand
"Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right."
--Ayn Rand
"Who are you to stand against the government? Who are you, you miserable little office rat, to judge national policies and hold opinions of your own? Do you think the country has time to bother about your opinions, your wishes or your precious little conscience?"
--Ayn Rand
"The editor had refused to run the article; he had stated that it would be bad for the country's morale."
--Ayn Rand
"If men like Boyle think that force is all they need to rob their betters—let them see what happens when one of their betters chooses to resort to force."
--Ayn Rand
"The purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is, coincidentally, the proper function of a government. So what exactly is your fleet doing?"
--Ayn Rand
"I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in." "What man?" "Robin Hood."
--Ayn Rand
"There is no way to disarm any man except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He'll bear any form of misery, he'll feel that he deserves no better. If there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it's evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it —we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel he's worth it. He won't fight."
--Ayn Rand
"I've heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but 'pliable' has never been one of them."
--Ayn Rand
"...one broken pane, pierced by a stone for some young moron's enjoyment"
--Ayn Rand
"What a man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment."
--Ayn Rand
"The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes—by refusing to buy my product."
--Ayn Rand
"I do not recognize this court's right to try me." "But, Mr. Rearden, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime." "I do not recognize my action as a crime," "But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your Metal." "I do not recognize your right to control the sale of my Metal." "Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?" "No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."
--Ayn Rand
"But don't I have any freedom of speech?" "In your own house. Not in mine." "Don't I have a right to my own ideas?" "At your own expense. Not at mine." "Don't you tolerate any differences of opinion?" "Not when I'm paying the bills." "Isn't there anything involved but money?" "Yes. The fact that it's my money."
--Ayn Rand
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system"
--Ayn Rand
"If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully." "Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong." "How do you know it?" "I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
--Ayn Rand
"How did you get here?" "By plane to Newark, by taxi from there, then by elevator"
--Ayn Rand
"Jim Taggart is one of the most powerful men in Washington at the moment." He did not say it respectfully."
--Ayn Rand
"It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect—it's only a payment which he's earned."
--Ayn Rand
"I don't want you to get in trouble, Mr. Rearden, and you're going to, sure as hell. You ask too many why's. Now why do you do that?"
--Ayn Rand
"They made the kind of fortunes they had dreamed about, fortunes requiring no competence or effort. Then their biggest customers, such as power companies, who drank oil by the trainful and would make no allowances for human frailty, began to convert to coal —and the smaller customers, who were more tolerant, began to go out of business—the boys in Washington imposed rationing on oil and an emergency tax on employers to support the unemployed oil field workers—then a few of the big oil companies closed down—then the little fellows in the sun discovered that a drilling bit which had cost a hundred dollars, now cost them five hundred, there being no market for oil field equipment, and the suppliers having to earn on one drill what they had earned on five, or perish—then the pipe lines began to close, there being no one able to pay for their upkeep—then the railroads were granted permission to raise their freight rates, there being little oil to carry and the cost of running tank trains having crushed two small lines out of existence—and when the sun went down, they saw that the operating costs, which had once permitted them to exist on their sixty-acre fields, had been made possible by the miles of Wyatt's hillside and had gone in the same coils of smoke. Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or to discuss."
--Ayn Rand
"everything you touched turned into gold!" "It's because I know what to touch."
--Ayn Rand
"What if it's not the truth that I want to know?" "Then I wouldn't know what to say"
--Ayn Rand
"Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth."
--Ayn Rand
"They're all climbing on the band wagon now. We're the band."
--Ayn Rand
"Do you remember the story they tell about Nat Taggart? He said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said 'The public be damned!' He wished he had said it."
--Ayn Rand
"The government money, he thought suddenly, the money now given to him as payment for his damaged property, where had that come from? Whose work had provided it?"
--Ayn Rand
"There is an exception to every rule, including this one"
"I don't like people who talk too much about how everything they do is just for the sake of others. It's not true. It may help them, but it helps them too"
--Ayn Rand
"Are you asking me to help him stage a fraud of that kind?" "You don't have to put it that way." "Is it a fraud—or isn't it?"
--Ayn Rand
"The man who thinks that his end justifies his seizure of my means."
--Ayn Rand
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
--Ayn Rand
"Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective is redundant."
--Ayn Rand
"You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself."
--Ayn Rand
"We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap." "You mean, your complaint is that they don't sell like soap?"
--Ayn Rand
"The article, "The Octopus," by Bertram Scudder, was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary."
--Ayn Rand
"One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it."
--Ayn Rand
"All you ever do is work! Don't you ever want to have a good time?" she looked at her incredulously and answered, "What do you think I'm having?"
--Ayn Rand
"They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well. They dislike me because I've always had the best grades in the class. I don't even have to study. I always get A's. Do you suppose I should try to get D's for a change and become the most popular girl in school?" Francisco stopped, looked at her and slapped her face."
--Ayn Rand
"It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."
--Ayn Rand
"What for?" Was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him—and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer."
--Ayn Rand
"The lord of the Inquisition did not approve of his manner of thinking and suggested, at a court banquet, that he change it. He threw the contents of his wine glass at the face of the lord of the Inquisition, and left Spain"
--Ayn Rand
"You dont have a chance!" "I intend to make my own chance."
--Ayn Rand
"What are you working on?" "It wouldn't interest you." "It does interest me. That's why I'm asking."
--Ayn Rand
"They think that your attitude is anti-social." "I don't give a damn what they think"
--Ayn Rand
"The date I had in mind was December tenth, but would you prefer the ninth or the eleventh?" "It makes no difference to me." She said gently, "December tenth is our wedding anniversary, Henry." They were all watching his face; if they expected a look of guilt, what they saw, instead, was a faint smile of amusement."
--Ayn Rand
"He had no capacity for the sort of conversations which were not supposed to be meant"
--Ayn Rand
"Pain was not a valid reason for stopping"
--Ayn Rand
"He never felt loneliness except when he was happy."
--Ayn Rand
"I don't see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation." "I'm not interested in. helping anybody. I want to make money."
--Ayn Rand
"I absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of the San Sebastian Line being nationalized!" "All right. Don't consider it."
--Ayn Rand
"Comstock raises his index finger to a map of Luzon. Then he catches himself, realizing that this would be more dignified if he used a pointer. He bends down and grabs a long pointer. Then he realizes he is too close, and has to back up a couple of steps in order to get the business end of the pointer on the part of the map that his index finger was touching a moment earlier. Finally situated, he vigorously circles a coastal region south of Manila"
--Neal Stephenson
"Anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass."
--Neal Stephenson
"Anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass. "
--Neal Stephenson
"To the north, and uphill, a jungle is attempting to tear down a mountain. "
--Neal Stephenson
"For something disgusting and lethal, cigarettes are amazingly enjoyable."
--Neal Stephenson
"The way to sneak into the country is not to mount some cloak-and-dagger operation, crawling up onto an isolated beach in a matte black wetsuit in the middle of the night, but simply to waltz in and make friends with all of the people who see you. Because it’s not like they’re stupid; they are going to see you."
--Neal Stephenson
"Nuts are the genitalia of trees"
--Neal Stephenson
"Overestimating the intelligence of the enemy is, if anything, more dangerous than underestimating it"
--Neal Stephenson
"He just wants to get the hell out of here and get married, play the organ, and program his Digital Computer, and hopefully get someone to pay him a salary to do one or the other. "
--Neal Stephenson
"For no reason other than the general belief that every aspect of a computer should be under the control of hackers, someone, somewhere, wrote some library routines called XLEDS that make it possible for programmers to turn these things on and off at will. "
--Neal Stephenson
"Even a gentle soul like Randy cannot gaze upon such a face without thinking how much better it would look with the application of some knuckles. "
--Neal Stephenson
"The Nips in the fortress are taking potshots at the approaching LCM, but the only target at which they have to aim is its front door, a piece of metal that can flop down to become a ramp, and which was designed, incredibly enough, on the assumption that doomed Nips would spend a lot of time trying to blow holes in it with various projectile weapons."
--Neal Stephenson
"All of the people who learned that bonzai charges dont work were killed in banzai charges"
--Neal Stephenson
"Can’t you recognize bullshit? Don’t you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, "My goodness, this appears to be bullshit? "
--Neal Stephenson
"Doug, how are you?" "I am just fine, thank you!" Doug is one of these guys who always interprets "how are you" as a literal request for information, not just an empty formality, and always seems slightly touched that someone would care enough to ask."
--Neal Stephenson
"It only takes a single generation to revert to savagery."
--Neal Stephenson
"Whats the point of stickers that say BABY ON BOARD, and things like that? You don't have to tell me there's a baby on board; I'm gonna drive carefully anyway! What am I supposed to do when I see there's a baby on board: act differently? As if I'm suddenly gonna drive more carefully and not hit the car because there's a baby on board, when all I'm trying to do is not hit it anyway!"
--Richard Feynman
"It turns out that, like all ethnic groups that have been consistently screwed for a long time, the Inner Qwghlmians have great music. Not only that, they actually have fun in church. The minister actually has a sense of humor. "
--Neal Stephenson
"After seeing that display of masculinity, he feels a strong impulse to drive straight to the nearest gun store and spend about ten thousand dollars. "
--Neal Stephenson
"She just wants to have all of the good parts of being a Finn without the bad parts." "What are the bad parts?" "Having to live in Finland," "
--Neal Stephenson
"With aplomb normally seen only among senescent English butlers, Bong-Bong reached up with his horn/gearshift hand and gripped a brilliant stainless-steel chain flailing from ceiling of cab with a stainless-steel crucifix on the end of it and jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary honking systems: a trio of tuba-sized stainless-steel horns mounted to the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and collectively drawing so much power that our vehicle's speed dropped by (I would estimate) ten km/hr as its energies were diverted into decibel production. A demi-hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops twenty miles long was flattened to the ground by the blast, and, hundreds of miles north, the Taiwanese government, its collective ears still ringing, filed a diplomatic protest with the Philippine ambassador. Dead whales and dolphins washed ashore on the beaches of Luzon for days, and sonar operators in passing U.S. Navy submarines were sent into early retirement with blood streaming from their ears."
--Neal Stephenson
"she is an image of corporeal perfection (she must carry an umbrella while out of doors lest her face cause pilots of overflying commercial airliners to pitch forward, dumb and inert, onto their control yokes) "
--Neal Stephenson
"The jet engine had recently been set on fire and then used to knock down a large number of pine trees. "
--Neal Stephenson
"This explanation comes from a Nobel Prize winner, so it must be right "
--Richard Feynman
"NASA had developed a peculiar kind of attitude: if one of the seals leaks a little and the flight is successful, the problem isn't so serious. Try playing Russian roulette that way: you pull the trigger and the gun doesn't go off, so it must be safe to pull the trigger again."
--Richard Feynman
"He did not know until now that his head was damaged, which stands to reason, in that your head is where you know things, and if it’s damaged, how can you know it?"
--Neal Stephenson
"There’s a bed, a little fold-out table, and cabinets made of actual wood. These in combination with the photographs of family and friends give it a cozy, domestic flavor which is, however, completely ruined by the framed picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall."
--Neal Stephenson
"What he is looking for will be found on the last place that he searches"
--Neal Stephenson
"There has been some routine polite conversation along the way, but there is never any point in actually monitoring that kind of thing."
--Neal Stephenson
"To say that the Qwghlmians have not forgotten the event is like saying that Germans can sometimes be a little prickly."
--Neal Stephenson
"In the desert, Brits wear shorts, which makes Shaftoe want to punch them in the nose."
--Neal Stephenson
"medical warnings so appalling that the topic headings alone induce faint nausea"
--Neal Stephenson
"They add up to some thirty kilograms, whatever the fuck that means."
--Neal Stephenson
"He is wearing the heavy-rimmed black eyeglasses known in the trade as RPGs, or Rape Prevention Glasses. They are strapped to his head by a hunk of black elastic. They make him look like a mental retard."
--Neal Stephenson
"Have you forgotten the second part of my order, Sergeant?" "Sir, yes, sir!"
--Neal Stephenson
"the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank. None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts. The concept of stamping out a whole lot of cars is unthinkable—there are certain procedures that have to be followed, Mr. Ford, such as the hand-brazing of radiators, the traditional whittling of the tyres from solid blocks of cahoutchouc."
--Neal Stephenson
"Sir! Could you please tell me what the hell that is, sir!"
--Neal Stephenson
"Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process."
--Neal Stephenson
"GIGO: garbage in, garbage out!"
--Richard Feynman
"Like we were doing something every day in Washington, we were, in reality, sitting around doing nothing most of the time."
--Richard Feynman
"hen I heard the investigation would be in Washington, my immediate reaction was not to do it: I have a principle of not going anywhere near Washington or having anything to do with government"
--Richard Feynman
"I am aware that men are in the habit of looking at whatever women happen to be nearby, in the hopes of deriving enjoyment from their physical beauty, their hair, makeup, fragrance, and clothing. I will ignore this, politely and patiently, until you get over it."
--Neal Stephenson
"What’s a Marine Raider?" "Like a Marine, only more so"
--Neal Stephenson
"...in order to kill whom a whole new class of ridiculously powerful sidearm (the Colt .45) had had to be invented."
--Neal Stephenson
"Her shoes aren’t made for walking, and thats just what she'll do"
"Kivistik had gone for the usual academician’s ace in the hole: everything is relative, it’s all just differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a start with: "Who decides what’s bad? I do."
--Neal Stephenson
"Randy had ruined his relationship with Charlene by wanting to have kids. Kids raise issues. Charlene, like all of her friends, couldn’t handle issues. Issues meant disagreement. Voicing disagreement was a form of conflict. Conflict, acted out openly and publicly, was a male mode of social interaction—the foundation for patriarchal society which brought with it the usual litany of dreadful things."
--Neal Stephenson
"So, you’re the UNIX guru." At the time, Randy was still stupid enough to be flattered by this attention, when he should have recognized them as bone-chilling words."
--Neal Stephenson
"An action, in a certain sense, might even be the total absence of activity."
--Neal Stephenson
"Hypo" is a military way of saying the letter H. Bright boy Waterhouse infers that there must be at least seven others: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. etc."
--Neal Stephenson
"Get this one a desk—as close to the coffee machine as possible. And why don’t you promote him as long as you’re at it."
--Neal Stephenson
"...overawed by their status as guys who not only worked on an actual ship until recently but furthermore have been very close to things that were exploding, burning, etc., and not as the result of routine lapses in judgment but because bad men deliberately made it happen..."
--Neal Stephenson
"Now that they have seen what happens to a ship when you detonate hundreds of pounds of high explosive on, in, and around it, Waterhouse and many others are reassessing their feelings about working in buildings. "
--Neal Stephenson
"He has gone back to his earlier train of thought regarding societies and their efforts to outdo each other. It is very clear to him, as wave after wave of Nipponese dive bombers hurl themselves, with calligraphic precision, at the ship he is standing on, and as the cream of his society’s navy burns and explodes and sinks, putting up virtually no resistance, that his society is going to have to rethink a thing or two."
--Neal Stephenson
"The rest of the day is spent, by Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and the rest of the Navy, grappling with the fact that many two-dimensional structures on this and other ships, which were put into place to prevent various fluids from commingling (e.g. fuel and air) have holes in them, and not only that but a lot of shit is on fire too and things are more than a little smoky. Certain objects that are supposed to (a) remain horizontal and (b) support heavy things have ceased to do either."
--Neal Stephenson
"fractally weird"
--Neal Stephenson
"He wondered for a while, and then he realized: "Fuck! He was reading poetry!"
--Neal Stephenson
"Never used a three-syllable word where a three-letter one would do. (and vice-versa)"
--Neal Stephenson
"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this rifle is mine."
--Neal Stephenson
"He realizes, suddenly, that it’s not a rock after all; it is a hand grenade!"
--Neal Stephenson
"...like a rabid ferret going into a pipe full of raw meat."
--Neal Stephenson
"As long as Avi retained this extemporaneous bullshitting ability there was a better than even chance of all of them making fuck-you money. "
--Neal Stephenson
"Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you money." It was not a fixed constant, however, but rather a cell in a spreadsheet linked to any number of continually fluctuating economic indicators. Sometimes when Avi is working at his computer he will leave the spreadsheet running in a tiny window in the corner so that he can see the current value of "fuck-you money" at a glance."
--Neal Stephenson
"Filipinos are a warm, gentle, caring, giving people, which is a good thing since so many of them carry concealed weapons."
--Neal Stephenson
"Lawrence perceived right away that Alan’s society had put him to work doing something useful—probably figuring out how to keep it from being eaten alive by certain of its neighbors."
--Neal Stephenson
"Groups of people—societies, rather than individual creatures, are now trying to out-reproduce and/or kill each other, and, in such a society, there is plenty of room for someone who doesn't have kids as long as they're up to something useful."
--Neal Stephenson
"Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo—which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass is dead."
--Neal Stephenson
"I know theres no secret meetings of powerful people going on, because if there were Id be in them "
"It doesn't matter if you're right, only if you're in charge "
"Leisure breeds incompetence "
"All's fair in love and war "
"You may not be able to trust him, but you can trust that he'll do what needs to be done "
"Why fight if you won't fight another day?"
"The third rule of statistics: (derived from rule 2) never trust statistics"
"The second rule of statistics: don't trust statiticians"
"The first rule of statistics: the statistics say whatever the statistician wants them to say"
"I may be paranoid, but paranoids are just people with all the facts "
"If it weren't for electricity, we'd all be watching TV by candlelight. "
--Stupidity
"Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain "
"Everyone has a price"
"He's so cool cigarettes are afraid of getting lung cancer from him "
"People are idiots. Collectively moreso "
"Anonymity/death: the great equalizer"
"Do you want the short answer or the long answer?" "I want the long answer." "Noooooooooo"
"In the center of the universe we are all alone "
--Kamelot
"...which experts agree is "pretty fucking stupid"
"If you are what you eat, eat only live animals "
"It's not important that my cow is dying as long as my neighbors cow is dying too "
"Humor is hardly ever taken seriously"
--John Walker
"Without a sequel everyone dies "
"If god made us in his image why aren't we invisible? "
"I can't wait for the day we have to jailbreak iMacs "
"What's a little blackmail between friends? "
"no. 1"
"Threats are useless if carried out "
"If porn is so bad, why are there so many nuns in it? "
"Norton antivirus: the first competitive virus "
"Though his mind is not for rent, to any god or government, don't out him down as arrogant"
--Rush
"Shhh, quiet. You might piss somebody off"
"You know I don't like to think!" "Maybe you should think about that"
"...for infinity..."
"We wanted to hold up a mirror to society. And, just as predicted, society looked away."
"Are you trying to be smart?" "No, I dont need to try. "
"Always have one more gun than anyone knows about "
"I don't believe in guns." "Why, have you never seen one before?"
--Bones
"No good deed goes unpunished"
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies "
"Learn the rules so you know how to break them"
"Why is it the bad guys that have guns? "
"One is always much braver with an audience"
--Suzanne Collins
"For a second, I'm afraid he's dying. I have to remind myself that I don't care."
--Suzanne Collins
"I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?" he asks "No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion"
--Suzanne Collins
"Important people usually get what they want"
--Suzanne Collins
"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody his ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."
--Richard Feynman
"if my room isn't bugged they are wasting a lot of wires"
--Richard Feynman
"He had never understood anything I had said to him previously, but he acted as if he understood exactly what I said, and he "translated" it with complete confidence for everyone. He was much like I am, in this respect. "
--Richard Feynman
"Why don't we let Peeta claim it, since he died today?"
--Catching Fire
"I don't like self-righteous people"
"I feel my way up the steps to the kitchen and see the glass window in the door has been shattered. Must be why my hand seems to be bleeding."
--Katniss (Catching Fire)
"We should listen to other people's opinions and take them into account. Then, if they don't make sense and we think they're wrong, then that's that! "
--Richard Feynman
"What do you care what other people think?"
"Destroying things is much easier than making them."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"To define is to limit."
"What fire does not destroy, it hardens."
"It is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I didn't say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The one charm of the past is that it is the past."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods.They are always bothering us to do something for them."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question— simple curiosity."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads." "All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes, and, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"This morning?!? Youve lived since then"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I choose...my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"a peacock in everything but beauty"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"People can believe anything, provided it is quite incredible"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Think only of the past if its remembrance gives you pleasure."
--Jane Austen
"For every lash upon the student’s hand, the teacher deserves two."
--Jane Austen
"We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, or be regarded as uncommonly clever."
--Jane Austen
"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness"
--Jubal
"Most do-gooding reminds me of treating hemophilia-the only real cure for hemophilia is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death, before they breed more hemophiliacs."
--Stranger in a Strange Land
"Look, Jubal, I respect you. Besides that, you are probably four of the six most popular writers alive today."
--Stranger in a Strange Land
"Long human words (the longer the better) are easy, unmistakable, and rarely change their meanings, but short words are slippery, unpredictable, they change their meanings without any pattern."
--Mike
"I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking."
--Mike (The Cat Who Walked Through Walls)
"Butterflies are not insects, they are self-propelled flowers"
--John Sterling (The Cat Who Walked Through Walls)
"There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion."
--Robert A. Heinlein
"An intellectual is a highly educated man who can\'t do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of his lack."
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"A Paradox Can Be Paradoctored"
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"\"How is this place run? Is it an anarchy?\" Hazel asked. \"No, I wouldn\\\'t say so. It is not that well organized.\""
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"The speed of light sucks. "
--John Carmack
"Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty."
--John Carmack
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true."
--James Branch Cabell
"I\'d rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game. "
--John Carmack
"The Daily Mail, Britain\\\'s answer to a pile of f*cking shite"
--Jim Sterling
"There are two types of lazy people in the world — those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to and those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to. The former group drives progress. The latter impedes it."
"The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements"
--George Bernard Shaw.
"If something cant go on forever, it wont. Whats important is how you handle the landing."
--John Carmack
"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
--Pablo Picasso
"I was walking down the street when I saw a dead baby ghost on the road. On reflection it might have been a handkerchief."
--Milton Jones
"I don\'t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
--Woodey Allen
"I spent a lot of my money on booze, girls and fast cars...the rest I squandered."
--George Best
"The infinite universe: It means Im right"
"I don\'t suffer from insanity, I\'m enjoying every minute of it."
"WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD: This toy is or contains a marble."
"The life of a pacifist is often fraught with conflict"
"...in spite of my education..."
"4 years ago, I decided to make a game console. So I did."
"[Insert tech here] is just yet another way of writing cross platform code that runs slower than everything else."
--Unknown
"You don\'t need to lie to a child, they can be convinced of the truth."
--Unknown
"You\'ll never know how far you can go until you go too far."
--Unknown
"C is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."
--Unknown
"Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders"
--Unknown
"Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."
--Keith Bostic
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not."
--Yoggi Berra
"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in."
--E. W. Dijkstra
"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."
--Bjarne Stroustrup
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems"
--Jamie Zawinski
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law."
--Hofstadter’s Law
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
--Gandhi
"Nothing shocks you like a bullet hole."
--Avenged Sevenfold
"I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."
--Marcel Duchamp
"The one thing that we must always remember about science is that the cavemen thought they were right too"
"Common sense is not so common"
--Voltaire
"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
--John F. Kennedy
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
--Voltaire
"When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders."
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
--Herman Melville
"One who walks in another\'s tracks leaves no footprints."
"Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you\'re locked up."
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
--Mark Twain
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don\'t matter and those who matter don\'t mind."
--Dr. Seuss
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
--George S. Patton
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped"
--Elbert Hubbard
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes. "
--Jack Handey
"The difference between strategy and tactics is the size of the explosion"
--Jacob Tanzman
"If I wanted your opinion I'd tell it to you"
"You're not going to go raise a lot of hell, are you?" " We can handle the hell we raise"
--Gunslinger Girl
"Mat is glad she didn't try to manipulate him and offered her supplies. She protested that she was sincere and not trying to manipulate him. He said that’s why he made the offer. "
"You should always be wary of those who favor you for no reason"
--Gunslinger Girl
"I don't want to regret doing nothing because of a future that may never come"
--Gurren Lagann
"I'm right, and if you disagree, I beat you up"
--TV Tropes
"Did you come here to gloat?" "No, I can gloat from a distance"
--The Mentalist
"think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?"
--Frank Kafka
"I don't like guns" "I don't like them much either, but I'd rather I have one then someone else"
"Millions of people can create lifelike pictures, but only one painted the Mona Lisa"
"How does it feel to be a murderer?" *takes out gun * "I don't know, lets find out"
"Gustibus non est disputandum - One should not argue over taste"
--Neal Stephenson
"Agnosticism: just in case"
"With great power comes great micromanagement. "
--House
"If you can't join them, beat them"
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device"
--David Langford
"No, wait, I've got it! Quick, stand next to me!" "Why?" "My name's in the title, I cant die! "
"... and it turned out it was the butler all along!" *GASP* "Gasp you should! "
--Archer
"First there was nothing, and then it exploded"
"If you're going to crazy, you'd better get paid for it or you're going to be locked up"
"The enemy of my friend is my enemy "
"I should have hit him if he had shot me through the brain"
--Andrew Jackson
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible"
--George Burns
"Do you think I'm stupid?" "Yes"
--The Mentalist
"Never kiss with a girl whose brothers have knife scars."
--Mat Cauthon
"Even the soundest of theories is subject to new data"
--Dexter Morgan
"You do know I punched the last person who pissed me off"
--Shed
"Homeopathy is the functional equivalent to doing fuck-all"
"People seem to get exponentially less healthy the more you stab them"
"The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act"
--Tara Ploughman
"What if Hitler gave you a cheese sandwich? "
"Just be yourself." "people never like me when I'm myself. People like ties. How's my tie?"
--Tommy Jefferson
"Denial is the first stage of grief. Sometimes it's actually the only stage, when the person isn't actually sad"
"You cant buy silence, only rent it"
"How do you know when youre in love?" "When all the songs make sense"
--Castle
"Working to find new ways to procrastinate"
"Asking me why I want to write all this code is like asking a chef why they want to make all this tasty food, when you could just go out and buy it."
"I find that a duck's opinion of me depends on whether or not I have bread"
"Nostalgia isnt what it used to be"
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine"
"Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?"
"Youre such a good friend, if we were on a sinking ship with only one life jacket, Id miss you a lot"
"We dont need gun control, we need idiot control, which, coincidentally, happens to be guns"
"You do not need a parachute to skydive. You need a parachute to skydive twice"
"Some people say "If you can't beat them, join them". I say "If you can't beat them, beat them", because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise"
"I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarianI didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian"
"Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish"
"Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs"
"The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad"
"The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list"
"The purpose of babies is to replace us"
--Jerry Seinfeld
"There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them"
--Terry Pratchet
"I don't go with the flow; the flow goes with me."
"I don’t like spinach, but I don’t think spinach should therefore be forbidden"
--Jonas Kyratzes
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
--Bjarne Stroustrup
"A happy ending depends on where you end the story"
"If I'd asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"
--Henry Ford
"If at first you don't succeed, you fail."
"Why would you think that? Whats wrong with you?" "I feel fine!"
"Once I decided not to laugh at jokes just because they were trying to be funny. I haven't laughed in a year"
"I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong"
"Every crime is some sort if theft"
"Most people seem normal until you get to know them. They're liars"
"Nothing is written in stone, unless you write it in concrete"
"For my birthday I wished I were dead, and then everyone clapped"
"Thats not what Buddha meant!" "Did you know him?"
"Don't touch the bombs"
"None is more deaf than those who do not listen"
"I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design, which is a fancy way of saying ‘unemployable’"
"You can't escape descisions made for you"
"Diplomacy - the art of letting someone have your way"
"Screw this, I'm the programmer! "
"You are entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to the facts. You are also, when presented with both, entitled to choose one of them"
"A: Ever read Plato's Symposium?
B: Maybe in college...
A: Well do you remember anything about it?
B: No...
A: Then I guess you havent read Plato's Symposium"
"The student who is told the least learns the most"
"A group of people sat in a room somewhere and asked themselves, "What should students know by the time they finish this course?"; listed some concepts, vocabulary terms, snippets of code and provisional test questions; arranged them into "modules," swaths of exposition followed by exercises; then handed off the course, ready-made, to teachers who had no choice but to follow it to the letter"
"Being popular means you don't have to be nice"
"There's two types of laziness: the kind where people strive to do things in the most efficient way, and the kind where they strive not to do anything at all"
"Some people think faster than they talk, so they talk fast. Some people think slower than they talk, so they talk slowly. Other people think slower than they talk, so they dont think"
"Arent you tired of winning yet?" "Youd think so, but no"
"Why don't you skip to the part where you tell me what you want."
"That sounds like a personal problem"
"Knowledge comes before desire"
"1. Press button. 2. Run like hell. 3. In case of emergency: run faster"
"Jack of all trades, master of many"
"Only the weak desire peace, a wish even the strongest of men cannot attain"
"The mind is one of the few weapons that can be used against it's holder"
"A different interpretation of the truth"
"While it's true that Zulus thought guns were for wusses, they also thought that was a pretty hollow principle if they couldn't get their enemies to agree to it, so they had a few guns."
"I think it will work, but 47 tons of TNT isn't the sort of thing you can test easily"
--Nerd Cubed
"Everything has a price"
"If you're going to be a cripple, better to be a rich cripple"
"Nothing before the word but counts"
"If they were they same thing, there wouldn't be two different words for it"
"I'm a wiseass, not a jackass"
"Hell is other people. With vuvuzelas."
"I see the alcohol is playing keep away with your already lacking intelligence"
"Goodbye, its been real!" "Id certainly hope so!"
"Those who can't do teach"
"Marcin wasn't quite finished pissing in the face of death"
"These lasers can cut through rocks and burn hot enough to make air explode at the focus point. That's right: They can kill the air itself."
"Don't worry, this will only hurt a lot"
"You know the guy that I told you about, that they would hire if they found out, who would kill us and our kids without breaking a sweat? This is the guy they get to kill that guy"
"In laymen's terms this means, "fuck if we know.""
"The only way you could get the line questions honestly wrong is if you took two doses of LSD that morning and rubbed them directly on your eyeballs (which would have made for an even more awesome experiment, but we're getting off the point)."
"The odds are nearly infinity to one that we are all living in a computer simulation."
"If you wanted someone to agree with you, why didn't you ask me for a mirror, instead of my opinion?"
"I don't blame you for being you, but you can't blame me for hating it"
--Fall Out Boy
"didgeridont"
"To escape criticism, achieve nothing"
"The harder I work, the luckier I get."
"Bet you weren't expecting that one, god!"
"I'm better at evil plans than, you, if only because I don't tell my enemies my plans"
"Hangovers: the free prize at the bottom of every beer bottle"
"There's an ass for every seat, so now I have to stand up"
"Everything is relative"
"Take it easy now, lets not jump to conclusions!" "Im not"
"Speak loud for the ones who hate your guts"
"Raise your voice any time they try to shut you up"
"Louder than gods revolver and twice as shiny"
"If you were going light speed and looked backwards you wouldn't see anything"
"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see"
"The next test will deal with physics conservation through portals, if the laws of physics no longer apply in the post apocalyptic future, god help you"
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard"
--Linus Torvalds
"I'm going to attempt a manual override on this wall"
"Still, it's a better plan than exploding, marginally"
"The odds are a million to one, and that's with some generous rounding"
"The strongest among you may not wear a crown"
"How are you? I'm a potato"
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. "
"Everyone has a right to be an idiot, but I wish you wouldnt"
"There are no wrong choices, at least thats what they tell people who make bad choices"
--House
"Whatever you're doing, take it to the extreme"
"If two people aggree completely then one of them isn't necessary"
"If the opposite of pro is con what is the opposite of progress?"
"The root of culture is cult"
"Sanity is relative"
"Lots of people think I have tourettes, but I don't"
"Hope you're hungry: friendly question or cruel taunt?"
"Trust, but verify"
"You must be deaf dumb blind and dumb"
"100% of statistics are made up"
"Why is loyal to a fault a good thing?"
"Don't tell me what you think, tell me why you think it"
"Don't lie"
"They're already running low on passes, so if you haven't already got yours you're probably too late. Unless you have boobs. Boobs solve everything"
"Whos the lady with the log?" "We call her the log lady"
--Twin Peaks
"One of these centuries, the brutes, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force."
--Ayn Rand
"Be quiet! I'm asking the questions!" "I'm not answering them."
--Ayn Rand
"Dont make any false moves!" "I never do"
--Ayn Rand
"An adolescent bully about to utter that philosophical argument which is expressed by the sentence: I'll bash your teeth in."
--Ayn Rand
"Printing presses of the government treasury were running a race with starvation, and losing."
--Ayn Rand
"I'm afraid he's a man who's not open to a deal." "There's no such thing"
--Ayn Rand
"You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code."
--Ayn Rand
"We do not consider need a claim"
--Ayn Rand
"Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!"—"Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!"—"Don't argue, obey!"—"Don't try to understand, believe!"-—"Don't rebel, adjust!"—"Don't stand out, belong!"—"Don't struggle, compromise!"—"Your heart is more important than your mind!"—"Who are you to know? Your parents know best!"—"Who are you to know? Society knows best!"—"Who are you to object? All values are relative!"—"Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"
--Ayn Rand
"Do you have a better solution to offer?" "Sure," said Rearden easily. "If it's production that you want, then get out of the way, junk all of your damn regulations, let Orren Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel—and it will be pouring a thousand tons a day from every one of its sixty furnaces." "Oh, but . . . but we couldn't!" gasped Mouch. "That would be monopoly!" Rearden chuckled. "Okay," he said indifferently, "then let my mills superintendent buy it. Hell do a better job than Boyle." "Oh, but that would be letting the strong have an advantage over the weak! We couldn't do that!" "Then don't talk about saving the country's economy."
--Ayn Rand
"Don't try to tell me what I'm going to think. Give me the facts."
--Ayn Rand
"My teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I answered: "Happy" She told I didnt understand the question. I told her she didnt understand life"
--Ayn Rand
"Those who had once simpered: "I don't want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they'll never miss it!"—then, later, had snapped: "The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they've amassed enough to last them for three generations"—then, later, had yelled: "Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?"—now were screaming: "Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?"
--Ayn Rand
"I can't bring men down to their knees in admiration—but I can bring them down to their knees."
--Ayn Rand
"his life's too short to have to notice your existence." "He'd notice it, if you bashed him over the head with a club!" "I'm not too sure. He'd merely blame himself for not having moved out of the club's reach. "
--Ayn Rand
"Justice- people getting what they deserve"
"I'd like to help you—not because you suffer, but because you haven't deserved to suffer."
--Ayn Rand
"Honest people are never nervous about the matter of being trusted"
--Ayn Rand
"That's what you think"
--Ayn Rand
"They were not fighting over what to do, but over whom to blame."
--Ayn Rand
"Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right, but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own"
--Ayn Rand
"The king is dead, long live the king"
--Ayn Rand
"Do not teach by telling, teach by showing."
--Ayn Rand
"We do not tell—we show. We do not claim—we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw—we can help you to name it, but not to accept it—the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours."
--Ayn Rand
"Aren't you training a man who could become your most dangerous competitor?" "That's the only sort of men I like to hire."
--Ayn Rand
"Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right."
--Ayn Rand
"Who are you to stand against the government? Who are you, you miserable little office rat, to judge national policies and hold opinions of your own? Do you think the country has time to bother about your opinions, your wishes or your precious little conscience?"
--Ayn Rand
"The editor had refused to run the article; he had stated that it would be bad for the country's morale."
--Ayn Rand
"If men like Boyle think that force is all they need to rob their betters—let them see what happens when one of their betters chooses to resort to force."
--Ayn Rand
"The purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is, coincidentally, the proper function of a government. So what exactly is your fleet doing?"
--Ayn Rand
"I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in." "What man?" "Robin Hood."
--Ayn Rand
"There is no way to disarm any man except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He'll bear any form of misery, he'll feel that he deserves no better. If there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it's evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it —we'll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won't defend himself. He won't feel he's worth it. He won't fight."
--Ayn Rand
"I've heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but 'pliable' has never been one of them."
--Ayn Rand
"...one broken pane, pierced by a stone for some young moron's enjoyment"
--Ayn Rand
"What a man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment."
--Ayn Rand
"The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes—by refusing to buy my product."
--Ayn Rand
"I do not recognize this court's right to try me." "But, Mr. Rearden, this is the legally appointed court to try this particular category of crime." "I do not recognize my action as a crime," "But you have admitted that you have broken our regulations controlling the sale of your Metal." "I do not recognize your right to control the sale of my Metal." "Is it necessary for me to point out that your recognition was not required?" "No. I am fully aware of it and I am acting accordingly."
--Ayn Rand
"But don't I have any freedom of speech?" "In your own house. Not in mine." "Don't I have a right to my own ideas?" "At your own expense. Not at mine." "Don't you tolerate any differences of opinion?" "Not when I'm paying the bills." "Isn't there anything involved but money?" "Yes. The fact that it's my money."
--Ayn Rand
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system"
--Ayn Rand
"If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully." "Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong." "How do you know it?" "I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
--Ayn Rand
"How did you get here?" "By plane to Newark, by taxi from there, then by elevator"
--Ayn Rand
"Jim Taggart is one of the most powerful men in Washington at the moment." He did not say it respectfully."
--Ayn Rand
"It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect—it's only a payment which he's earned."
--Ayn Rand
"I don't want you to get in trouble, Mr. Rearden, and you're going to, sure as hell. You ask too many why's. Now why do you do that?"
--Ayn Rand
"They made the kind of fortunes they had dreamed about, fortunes requiring no competence or effort. Then their biggest customers, such as power companies, who drank oil by the trainful and would make no allowances for human frailty, began to convert to coal —and the smaller customers, who were more tolerant, began to go out of business—the boys in Washington imposed rationing on oil and an emergency tax on employers to support the unemployed oil field workers—then a few of the big oil companies closed down—then the little fellows in the sun discovered that a drilling bit which had cost a hundred dollars, now cost them five hundred, there being no market for oil field equipment, and the suppliers having to earn on one drill what they had earned on five, or perish—then the pipe lines began to close, there being no one able to pay for their upkeep—then the railroads were granted permission to raise their freight rates, there being little oil to carry and the cost of running tank trains having crushed two small lines out of existence—and when the sun went down, they saw that the operating costs, which had once permitted them to exist on their sixty-acre fields, had been made possible by the miles of Wyatt's hillside and had gone in the same coils of smoke. Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or to discuss."
--Ayn Rand
"everything you touched turned into gold!" "It's because I know what to touch."
--Ayn Rand
"What if it's not the truth that I want to know?" "Then I wouldn't know what to say"
--Ayn Rand
"Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth."
--Ayn Rand
"They're all climbing on the band wagon now. We're the band."
--Ayn Rand
"Do you remember the story they tell about Nat Taggart? He said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said 'The public be damned!' He wished he had said it."
--Ayn Rand
"The government money, he thought suddenly, the money now given to him as payment for his damaged property, where had that come from? Whose work had provided it?"
--Ayn Rand
"There is an exception to every rule, including this one"
"I don't like people who talk too much about how everything they do is just for the sake of others. It's not true. It may help them, but it helps them too"
--Ayn Rand
"Are you asking me to help him stage a fraud of that kind?" "You don't have to put it that way." "Is it a fraud—or isn't it?"
--Ayn Rand
"The man who thinks that his end justifies his seizure of my means."
--Ayn Rand
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
--Ayn Rand
"Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective is redundant."
--Ayn Rand
"You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself."
--Ayn Rand
"We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap." "You mean, your complaint is that they don't sell like soap?"
--Ayn Rand
"The article, "The Octopus," by Bertram Scudder, was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary."
--Ayn Rand
"One holds property only by the courtesy of those who do not seize it."
--Ayn Rand
"All you ever do is work! Don't you ever want to have a good time?" she looked at her incredulously and answered, "What do you think I'm having?"
--Ayn Rand
"They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well. They dislike me because I've always had the best grades in the class. I don't even have to study. I always get A's. Do you suppose I should try to get D's for a change and become the most popular girl in school?" Francisco stopped, looked at her and slapped her face."
--Ayn Rand
"It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."
--Ayn Rand
"What for?" Was the first question he asked about any activity proposed to him—and nothing would make him act, if he found no valid answer."
--Ayn Rand
"The lord of the Inquisition did not approve of his manner of thinking and suggested, at a court banquet, that he change it. He threw the contents of his wine glass at the face of the lord of the Inquisition, and left Spain"
--Ayn Rand
"You dont have a chance!" "I intend to make my own chance."
--Ayn Rand
"What are you working on?" "It wouldn't interest you." "It does interest me. That's why I'm asking."
--Ayn Rand
"They think that your attitude is anti-social." "I don't give a damn what they think"
--Ayn Rand
"The date I had in mind was December tenth, but would you prefer the ninth or the eleventh?" "It makes no difference to me." She said gently, "December tenth is our wedding anniversary, Henry." They were all watching his face; if they expected a look of guilt, what they saw, instead, was a faint smile of amusement."
--Ayn Rand
"He had no capacity for the sort of conversations which were not supposed to be meant"
--Ayn Rand
"Pain was not a valid reason for stopping"
--Ayn Rand
"He never felt loneliness except when he was happy."
--Ayn Rand
"I don't see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation." "I'm not interested in. helping anybody. I want to make money."
--Ayn Rand
"I absolutely refuse to consider the possibility of the San Sebastian Line being nationalized!" "All right. Don't consider it."
--Ayn Rand
"Comstock raises his index finger to a map of Luzon. Then he catches himself, realizing that this would be more dignified if he used a pointer. He bends down and grabs a long pointer. Then he realizes he is too close, and has to back up a couple of steps in order to get the business end of the pointer on the part of the map that his index finger was touching a moment earlier. Finally situated, he vigorously circles a coastal region south of Manila"
--Neal Stephenson
"Anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass."
--Neal Stephenson
"Anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass. "
--Neal Stephenson
"To the north, and uphill, a jungle is attempting to tear down a mountain. "
--Neal Stephenson
"For something disgusting and lethal, cigarettes are amazingly enjoyable."
--Neal Stephenson
"The way to sneak into the country is not to mount some cloak-and-dagger operation, crawling up onto an isolated beach in a matte black wetsuit in the middle of the night, but simply to waltz in and make friends with all of the people who see you. Because it’s not like they’re stupid; they are going to see you."
--Neal Stephenson
"Nuts are the genitalia of trees"
--Neal Stephenson
"Overestimating the intelligence of the enemy is, if anything, more dangerous than underestimating it"
--Neal Stephenson
"He just wants to get the hell out of here and get married, play the organ, and program his Digital Computer, and hopefully get someone to pay him a salary to do one or the other. "
--Neal Stephenson
"For no reason other than the general belief that every aspect of a computer should be under the control of hackers, someone, somewhere, wrote some library routines called XLEDS that make it possible for programmers to turn these things on and off at will. "
--Neal Stephenson
"Even a gentle soul like Randy cannot gaze upon such a face without thinking how much better it would look with the application of some knuckles. "
--Neal Stephenson
"The Nips in the fortress are taking potshots at the approaching LCM, but the only target at which they have to aim is its front door, a piece of metal that can flop down to become a ramp, and which was designed, incredibly enough, on the assumption that doomed Nips would spend a lot of time trying to blow holes in it with various projectile weapons."
--Neal Stephenson
"All of the people who learned that bonzai charges dont work were killed in banzai charges"
--Neal Stephenson
"Can’t you recognize bullshit? Don’t you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, "My goodness, this appears to be bullshit? "
--Neal Stephenson
"Doug, how are you?" "I am just fine, thank you!" Doug is one of these guys who always interprets "how are you" as a literal request for information, not just an empty formality, and always seems slightly touched that someone would care enough to ask."
--Neal Stephenson
"It only takes a single generation to revert to savagery."
--Neal Stephenson
"Whats the point of stickers that say BABY ON BOARD, and things like that? You don't have to tell me there's a baby on board; I'm gonna drive carefully anyway! What am I supposed to do when I see there's a baby on board: act differently? As if I'm suddenly gonna drive more carefully and not hit the car because there's a baby on board, when all I'm trying to do is not hit it anyway!"
--Richard Feynman
"It turns out that, like all ethnic groups that have been consistently screwed for a long time, the Inner Qwghlmians have great music. Not only that, they actually have fun in church. The minister actually has a sense of humor. "
--Neal Stephenson
"After seeing that display of masculinity, he feels a strong impulse to drive straight to the nearest gun store and spend about ten thousand dollars. "
--Neal Stephenson
"She just wants to have all of the good parts of being a Finn without the bad parts." "What are the bad parts?" "Having to live in Finland," "
--Neal Stephenson
"With aplomb normally seen only among senescent English butlers, Bong-Bong reached up with his horn/gearshift hand and gripped a brilliant stainless-steel chain flailing from ceiling of cab with a stainless-steel crucifix on the end of it and jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary honking systems: a trio of tuba-sized stainless-steel horns mounted to the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and collectively drawing so much power that our vehicle's speed dropped by (I would estimate) ten km/hr as its energies were diverted into decibel production. A demi-hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops twenty miles long was flattened to the ground by the blast, and, hundreds of miles north, the Taiwanese government, its collective ears still ringing, filed a diplomatic protest with the Philippine ambassador. Dead whales and dolphins washed ashore on the beaches of Luzon for days, and sonar operators in passing U.S. Navy submarines were sent into early retirement with blood streaming from their ears."
--Neal Stephenson
"she is an image of corporeal perfection (she must carry an umbrella while out of doors lest her face cause pilots of overflying commercial airliners to pitch forward, dumb and inert, onto their control yokes) "
--Neal Stephenson
"The jet engine had recently been set on fire and then used to knock down a large number of pine trees. "
--Neal Stephenson
"This explanation comes from a Nobel Prize winner, so it must be right "
--Richard Feynman
"NASA had developed a peculiar kind of attitude: if one of the seals leaks a little and the flight is successful, the problem isn't so serious. Try playing Russian roulette that way: you pull the trigger and the gun doesn't go off, so it must be safe to pull the trigger again."
--Richard Feynman
"He did not know until now that his head was damaged, which stands to reason, in that your head is where you know things, and if it’s damaged, how can you know it?"
--Neal Stephenson
"There’s a bed, a little fold-out table, and cabinets made of actual wood. These in combination with the photographs of family and friends give it a cozy, domestic flavor which is, however, completely ruined by the framed picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall."
--Neal Stephenson
"What he is looking for will be found on the last place that he searches"
--Neal Stephenson
"There has been some routine polite conversation along the way, but there is never any point in actually monitoring that kind of thing."
--Neal Stephenson
"To say that the Qwghlmians have not forgotten the event is like saying that Germans can sometimes be a little prickly."
--Neal Stephenson
"In the desert, Brits wear shorts, which makes Shaftoe want to punch them in the nose."
--Neal Stephenson
"medical warnings so appalling that the topic headings alone induce faint nausea"
--Neal Stephenson
"They add up to some thirty kilograms, whatever the fuck that means."
--Neal Stephenson
"He is wearing the heavy-rimmed black eyeglasses known in the trade as RPGs, or Rape Prevention Glasses. They are strapped to his head by a hunk of black elastic. They make him look like a mental retard."
--Neal Stephenson
"Have you forgotten the second part of my order, Sergeant?" "Sir, yes, sir!"
--Neal Stephenson
"the underlying structure of everything in England is posh. There is no in-between with these people. You have to walk a mile to find a telephone booth, but when you find it, it is built as if the senseless dynamiting of pay phones had been a serious problem at some time in the past. And a British mailbox can presumably stop a German tank. None of them have cars, but when they do, they are three-ton hand-built beasts. The concept of stamping out a whole lot of cars is unthinkable—there are certain procedures that have to be followed, Mr. Ford, such as the hand-brazing of radiators, the traditional whittling of the tyres from solid blocks of cahoutchouc."
--Neal Stephenson
"Sir! Could you please tell me what the hell that is, sir!"
--Neal Stephenson
"Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process."
--Neal Stephenson
"GIGO: garbage in, garbage out!"
--Richard Feynman
"Like we were doing something every day in Washington, we were, in reality, sitting around doing nothing most of the time."
--Richard Feynman
"hen I heard the investigation would be in Washington, my immediate reaction was not to do it: I have a principle of not going anywhere near Washington or having anything to do with government"
--Richard Feynman
"I am aware that men are in the habit of looking at whatever women happen to be nearby, in the hopes of deriving enjoyment from their physical beauty, their hair, makeup, fragrance, and clothing. I will ignore this, politely and patiently, until you get over it."
--Neal Stephenson
"What’s a Marine Raider?" "Like a Marine, only more so"
--Neal Stephenson
"...in order to kill whom a whole new class of ridiculously powerful sidearm (the Colt .45) had had to be invented."
--Neal Stephenson
"Her shoes aren’t made for walking, and thats just what she'll do"
"Kivistik had gone for the usual academician’s ace in the hole: everything is relative, it’s all just differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a start with: "Who decides what’s bad? I do."
--Neal Stephenson
"Randy had ruined his relationship with Charlene by wanting to have kids. Kids raise issues. Charlene, like all of her friends, couldn’t handle issues. Issues meant disagreement. Voicing disagreement was a form of conflict. Conflict, acted out openly and publicly, was a male mode of social interaction—the foundation for patriarchal society which brought with it the usual litany of dreadful things."
--Neal Stephenson
"So, you’re the UNIX guru." At the time, Randy was still stupid enough to be flattered by this attention, when he should have recognized them as bone-chilling words."
--Neal Stephenson
"An action, in a certain sense, might even be the total absence of activity."
--Neal Stephenson
"Hypo" is a military way of saying the letter H. Bright boy Waterhouse infers that there must be at least seven others: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. etc."
--Neal Stephenson
"Get this one a desk—as close to the coffee machine as possible. And why don’t you promote him as long as you’re at it."
--Neal Stephenson
"...overawed by their status as guys who not only worked on an actual ship until recently but furthermore have been very close to things that were exploding, burning, etc., and not as the result of routine lapses in judgment but because bad men deliberately made it happen..."
--Neal Stephenson
"Now that they have seen what happens to a ship when you detonate hundreds of pounds of high explosive on, in, and around it, Waterhouse and many others are reassessing their feelings about working in buildings. "
--Neal Stephenson
"He has gone back to his earlier train of thought regarding societies and their efforts to outdo each other. It is very clear to him, as wave after wave of Nipponese dive bombers hurl themselves, with calligraphic precision, at the ship he is standing on, and as the cream of his society’s navy burns and explodes and sinks, putting up virtually no resistance, that his society is going to have to rethink a thing or two."
--Neal Stephenson
"The rest of the day is spent, by Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and the rest of the Navy, grappling with the fact that many two-dimensional structures on this and other ships, which were put into place to prevent various fluids from commingling (e.g. fuel and air) have holes in them, and not only that but a lot of shit is on fire too and things are more than a little smoky. Certain objects that are supposed to (a) remain horizontal and (b) support heavy things have ceased to do either."
--Neal Stephenson
"fractally weird"
--Neal Stephenson
"He wondered for a while, and then he realized: "Fuck! He was reading poetry!"
--Neal Stephenson
"Never used a three-syllable word where a three-letter one would do. (and vice-versa)"
--Neal Stephenson
"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this rifle is mine."
--Neal Stephenson
"He realizes, suddenly, that it’s not a rock after all; it is a hand grenade!"
--Neal Stephenson
"...like a rabid ferret going into a pipe full of raw meat."
--Neal Stephenson
"As long as Avi retained this extemporaneous bullshitting ability there was a better than even chance of all of them making fuck-you money. "
--Neal Stephenson
"Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you money." It was not a fixed constant, however, but rather a cell in a spreadsheet linked to any number of continually fluctuating economic indicators. Sometimes when Avi is working at his computer he will leave the spreadsheet running in a tiny window in the corner so that he can see the current value of "fuck-you money" at a glance."
--Neal Stephenson
"Filipinos are a warm, gentle, caring, giving people, which is a good thing since so many of them carry concealed weapons."
--Neal Stephenson
"Lawrence perceived right away that Alan’s society had put him to work doing something useful—probably figuring out how to keep it from being eaten alive by certain of its neighbors."
--Neal Stephenson
"Groups of people—societies, rather than individual creatures, are now trying to out-reproduce and/or kill each other, and, in such a society, there is plenty of room for someone who doesn't have kids as long as they're up to something useful."
--Neal Stephenson
"Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo—which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass is dead."
--Neal Stephenson
"I know theres no secret meetings of powerful people going on, because if there were Id be in them "
"It doesn't matter if you're right, only if you're in charge "
"Leisure breeds incompetence "
"All's fair in love and war "
"You may not be able to trust him, but you can trust that he'll do what needs to be done "
"Why fight if you won't fight another day?"
"The third rule of statistics: (derived from rule 2) never trust statistics"
"The second rule of statistics: don't trust statiticians"
"The first rule of statistics: the statistics say whatever the statistician wants them to say"
"I may be paranoid, but paranoids are just people with all the facts "
"If it weren't for electricity, we'd all be watching TV by candlelight. "
--Stupidity
"Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain "
"Everyone has a price"
"He's so cool cigarettes are afraid of getting lung cancer from him "
"People are idiots. Collectively moreso "
"Anonymity/death: the great equalizer"
"Do you want the short answer or the long answer?" "I want the long answer." "Noooooooooo"
"In the center of the universe we are all alone "
--Kamelot
"...which experts agree is "pretty fucking stupid"
"If you are what you eat, eat only live animals "
"It's not important that my cow is dying as long as my neighbors cow is dying too "
"Humor is hardly ever taken seriously"
--John Walker
"Without a sequel everyone dies "
"If god made us in his image why aren't we invisible? "
"I can't wait for the day we have to jailbreak iMacs "
"What's a little blackmail between friends? "
"no. 1"
"Threats are useless if carried out "
"If porn is so bad, why are there so many nuns in it? "
"Norton antivirus: the first competitive virus "
"Though his mind is not for rent, to any god or government, don't out him down as arrogant"
--Rush
"Shhh, quiet. You might piss somebody off"
"You know I don't like to think!" "Maybe you should think about that"
"...for infinity..."
"We wanted to hold up a mirror to society. And, just as predicted, society looked away."
"Are you trying to be smart?" "No, I dont need to try. "
"Always have one more gun than anyone knows about "
"I don't believe in guns." "Why, have you never seen one before?"
--Bones
"No good deed goes unpunished"
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies "
"Learn the rules so you know how to break them"
"Why is it the bad guys that have guns? "
"One is always much braver with an audience"
--Suzanne Collins
"For a second, I'm afraid he's dying. I have to remind myself that I don't care."
--Suzanne Collins
"I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?" he asks "No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion"
--Suzanne Collins
"Important people usually get what they want"
--Suzanne Collins
"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody his ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."
--Richard Feynman
"if my room isn't bugged they are wasting a lot of wires"
--Richard Feynman
"He had never understood anything I had said to him previously, but he acted as if he understood exactly what I said, and he "translated" it with complete confidence for everyone. He was much like I am, in this respect. "
--Richard Feynman
"Why don't we let Peeta claim it, since he died today?"
--Catching Fire
"I don't like self-righteous people"
"I feel my way up the steps to the kitchen and see the glass window in the door has been shattered. Must be why my hand seems to be bleeding."
--Katniss (Catching Fire)
"We should listen to other people's opinions and take them into account. Then, if they don't make sense and we think they're wrong, then that's that! "
--Richard Feynman
"What do you care what other people think?"
"Destroying things is much easier than making them."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"To define is to limit."
"What fire does not destroy, it hardens."
"It is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I didn't say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The one charm of the past is that it is the past."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods.They are always bothering us to do something for them."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question— simple curiosity."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with her charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads." "All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect. Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"It is such a bore putting on one's dress-clothes, and, when one has them on, they are so horrid."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"This morning?!? Youve lived since then"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I choose...my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"a peacock in everything but beauty"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"People can believe anything, provided it is quite incredible"
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Think only of the past if its remembrance gives you pleasure."
--Jane Austen
"For every lash upon the student’s hand, the teacher deserves two."
--Jane Austen
"We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, or be regarded as uncommonly clever."
--Jane Austen
"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness"
--Jubal
"Most do-gooding reminds me of treating hemophilia-the only real cure for hemophilia is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death, before they breed more hemophiliacs."
--Stranger in a Strange Land
"Look, Jubal, I respect you. Besides that, you are probably four of the six most popular writers alive today."
--Stranger in a Strange Land
"Long human words (the longer the better) are easy, unmistakable, and rarely change their meanings, but short words are slippery, unpredictable, they change their meanings without any pattern."
--Mike
"I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking."
--Mike (The Cat Who Walked Through Walls)
"Butterflies are not insects, they are self-propelled flowers"
--John Sterling (The Cat Who Walked Through Walls)
"There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion."
--Robert A. Heinlein
"An intellectual is a highly educated man who can\'t do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of his lack."
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"A Paradox Can Be Paradoctored"
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"\"How is this place run? Is it an anarchy?\" Hazel asked. \"No, I wouldn\\\'t say so. It is not that well organized.\""
--The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
"The speed of light sucks. "
--John Carmack
"Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty."
--John Carmack
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true."
--James Branch Cabell
"I\'d rather have a search engine or a compiler on a deserted island than a game. "
--John Carmack
"The Daily Mail, Britain\\\'s answer to a pile of f*cking shite"
--Jim Sterling
"There are two types of lazy people in the world — those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to and those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to. The former group drives progress. The latter impedes it."
"The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements"
--George Bernard Shaw.
"If something cant go on forever, it wont. Whats important is how you handle the landing."
--John Carmack
"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
--Pablo Picasso
"I was walking down the street when I saw a dead baby ghost on the road. On reflection it might have been a handkerchief."
--Milton Jones
"I don\'t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
--Woodey Allen
"I spent a lot of my money on booze, girls and fast cars...the rest I squandered."
--George Best
"The infinite universe: It means Im right"
"I don\'t suffer from insanity, I\'m enjoying every minute of it."
"WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD: This toy is or contains a marble."
"The life of a pacifist is often fraught with conflict"
"...in spite of my education..."
"4 years ago, I decided to make a game console. So I did."
"[Insert tech here] is just yet another way of writing cross platform code that runs slower than everything else."
--Unknown
"You don\'t need to lie to a child, they can be convinced of the truth."
--Unknown
"You\'ll never know how far you can go until you go too far."
--Unknown
"C is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."
--Unknown
"Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders"
--Unknown
"Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."
--Keith Bostic
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not."
--Yoggi Berra
"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in."
--E. W. Dijkstra
"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."
--Bjarne Stroustrup
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems"
--Jamie Zawinski
"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law."
--Hofstadter’s Law
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
--Gandhi
"Nothing shocks you like a bullet hole."
--Avenged Sevenfold
"I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."
--Marcel Duchamp
"The one thing that we must always remember about science is that the cavemen thought they were right too"
"Common sense is not so common"
--Voltaire
"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
--John F. Kennedy
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
--Voltaire
"When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders."
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
--Herman Melville
"One who walks in another\'s tracks leaves no footprints."
"Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you\'re locked up."
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
--Mark Twain
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don\'t matter and those who matter don\'t mind."
--Dr. Seuss
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
--George S. Patton
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped"
--Elbert Hubbard
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes. "
--Jack Handey