Best quotes

Here is a link to another blog I maintain on national security, the defense department and foreign policy:

http://natsecurityeb.blogspot.com/


"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"--Warren Buffett

    "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit", Harry S Truman (1884-1972)

"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results.  I know several thousand things that won't work."--Thomas Edison

"Careful--we don't want to learn from this!"--Calvin and Hobbes

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."--Elizabeth Taylor


"A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sin, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing."--Samuel Butler

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

"Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a blood-curdling maniacal scream, but still it will be a laugh."--Joe Martin, Mister Boffo

"Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked."--Warren Buffett

"The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. ... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it."--Richard Feynman

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Richard Feynman

"Science requires a kind of utter honesty"--Richard Feynman

"I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write."
Ken Thompson (Unix creator)

"When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact"--Warren Buffett


"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain. "--Mark Twain

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. "--Mark Twain

"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising."--Mark Twain

"To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct."--Mark Twain

"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."--Mark Twain

"To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady."--Mark Twain

"I don't mind if I am just a grain of sand in a machine. Because I know by putting more and more grains of sand in a machine, one day it'll come grinding to a stop." - Thomas Becketton

Bertie Wooster: "Yes, well, you know best, Jeeves. Very well. Now then. A is male and B female. You follow me so far?"
Jeeves: "You have been lucidity itself, sir."

Melchett: "Started talking to yourself, Blackadder?"
Blackadder: "Yes, it's the only way I can be sure of intelligent conversation around here!"

Gob "These are Lawyers.  That's Latin for liars."

Francis Urquhart " His deepest need was that people should like him. An admirable trait that; in a spaniel or a whore. Not, I think, in a Prime Minister."

"You might well think that; I couldn't possibly comment"
Francis Urquhart


"You can’t have much of an economy if people are just flipping hamburgers, trading stocks, and suing each other." -- Wilbur Ross

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." --George Orwell

"The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post "Thou shalt not steal", "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment." -- George Carlin

"It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
Mahatma Gandhi

All right, then, I'll go to hell.
Mark Twain ("Huckleberry Finn")

"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."  John Maynard Keynes

"The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies--such as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.  Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a fist fight."  Richard Stallman

Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.”

John Maynard Keynes




"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place. "--Mark Twain

"I love thee, I love but thee With a love that shall not die Till the sun grows cold And the stars grow old." - William Shakespeare

"Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure."--Thomas Edison

"The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth."--Leo Tolstoy

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."--Leo Tolstoy

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."--Tom Robbins

"Beware of Geeks bearing formulas"--Warren Buffett

My goals in life are to destroy the evil twin towers of the American Medical Association and higher education and everything else built by the baby boomers aka fat pigs.  This will all be accomplished through data mining on a massive scale.

"sacrificing anonymity may be the next generation's price for keeping precious liberty, as prior generations paid in blood." -- Hal Normy

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson

"Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the fear that you have something to lose," -Steve Jobs

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."--Wilhelm Stekel as quoted in Catcher in the Rye

"With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them." --Friedrich Nietzsche

"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian"
--Mark Twain

"In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow."--Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat."--Friedrich Nietzsche

"But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!"--Friedrich Nietzsche

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

"Blood. Sometimes it sets my teeth on edge, other times it helps me control the chaos." --Dexter Morgan

Thinking of getting a license for a public arts project so I can build a giant guillotine on the Washington DC mall.

Getting tenure in academia is like throwing yourself into a meat grinder and surviving. Sure, it's impressive but why did you throw yourself in?

"He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it."  John Locke

"Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home." Francis Bacon

"The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good."  Francis Bacon