This is a set of quotes I find cool or interesting, which perhaps tautologically includes original ones. I don't necessarily agree with all of them; just the majority.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyse his delusions is called a philosopher. --Ambrose Bierce
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. --Edward Abbey
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." --Matthew 5:38:45 [I'm a staunch atheist for the record, but as a pacifist, I find this quote inspirational.]
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. --James Barrie, Scottish dramatist (1860-1937)
[Orthogonality] is [a] way to learn and progress. --Eric Schadt
Everything is up for grabs in our popular culture melting pot. Get your strategic belly button piercing here! Get your wallet chains here! Your modern primitive tattoos! Your Korn T-Shirts. It all kinda makes me really appreciate plain people. Personally, that's why I wear suits. Subversion comes from the inside. The kind that counts anyway. --Bob C. Cock
Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be alcoholic, a dope fiend or a wife-beater, but if a man doesn't drive a car, everybody thinks that something is wrong with him. --Art Buchwald [I did not own a car until I was 27.]
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. --Winston Churchill
My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Poor little black people and babies and children and women. How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail. —-Muhammad Ali
"You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly."--Sam Keen
"Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement." --Will Durant
Only the mediocre are always at their best. --Jean Giraudoux [I like this quote and understand the meaning. At the same time I don't take it literally in the sense that I believe that everyone has something to offer in this world.]
We cannot degrade our environment without degrading our lives. --Ben Okri
The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them has to forgo closeness with people around him. --Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintainance
Nobody listened to him [the Buddha], that's why there is Buddhism. --Jiddu Krishnamurti
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. --Benjamin Disraeli
It's okay for me to have a double standard, but not you.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
I just exchanged one set of complications for another. --Father Andrew Kiernan to Frankie Paige in Stigmata, talking about he can live without sex.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for each other, as those willing with such a will, is what I name marriage. Let this be the meaning and truth of your marriage. But that which the all-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage---alas, what shall I name that? Alas, this poverty of the soul in pair! Alas, this filth of the soul in pair! Alas, this wretched contentment in pair! Marriage they call this; and they say their marriages are made in heaven. Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous. No, I do not like them---these animals entangled in the heavenly net. And let the god who limps near to bless what he never joined keep his distance from me! Do not laugh at such marriages! What child would not have cause to weep over its parents? --Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death. --Spinoza
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. --Robert Frost
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
It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing — and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple. --Mark Twain
Learning is a celebration of life.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. --Gandhi
Unfortunately, these young men often fail to understand that the sacrifice of their lives may be the easiest of all sacrifices, much easier, for instance, then giving up five or six years of their seething youth to hard study, to the acquisition of knowledge which would increase their strength tenfold in the service or that same cause, and in the performance of the great works they aspire to. --Fyodor Dostoevsky
Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. -- Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief
We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country of Czechoslovakia; it is rather its leader, Edward Benes. He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The Czech maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings." --Adolph Hitler, April 14th, 1939
As the clearing grows, so does the expanse.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. --Martin Luther King Jr.
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. --Friedrich Nietzsche
The point is that, whenever we propose a solution to a problem we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it. Few of us, unfortunately practice this percept; but other people, fortunately, will supply the criticism for us if we fail to supply it ourselves. --Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
A problem cannot be solved using the same thought processes that created it.
Beneath knowing, understanding
Beneath understanding, seeing
Beneath seeing, recognizing
Beneath recognizing, knowing
--attributed to "Keeper of the Way, Vision of Faith" in the Andromeda TV series.
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. --Albert Einstein
Eschew obfuscation. --seen on USENET
This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. --Albert Einstein
Because in person I'd just ignore you and change the subject, but
Usenet for some reason creates the impulse to defend one's position
and follow up to every counterargument. Why it does that is something
of a mystery and really fascinating. It tends to result in people
getting dragged into arguments over things they know nothing
whatsoever about, like me and brain chemical balances, even when they
were really trying to argue about something else entirely, because
they make some off-hand statement and then can't figure out how to
stop defending it. --Russ Allbery, in su.org.asm,
responding to why it's easier to ignore my
specific style of debate in real life compared to USENET.
This is why math is so useful. It's not a real-world construct, and
as a result we can make absolute blanket statements in math.
Thus, we can make high-level statements about the real world whose
truth is only predicated on the truth of the much lower-level mapping
from real world to mathematics. This is a very powerful ability!
--Brooks Moses, in su.org.asm.
The modesty I feel is not false. I know the $ heaped on me lately was transient and I tried to use it as best I could to position me to survive the next downturn, because I knew a downturn would come again (and it is starting now). I also know that for me to succeed in making an HIV vaccine, my final career goal, I need to bide my time, work quietly and try to get all the data lined up to make an overwhelming case to the naysayers. I may have confidence in my approach, but there is no reason for others to have that confidence when they have tried hard and more visibly and failed. Each failure along the way sets this goal back quite a bit, which is why I try to be quiet as I go. --Jim Mullins, commenting on being modest after receiving large amounts of grant funding.
Siddhartha now also realized why he had struggled in vain with this Self when he was a Brahmin and an ascetic. Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. He had been full of arrogance; he had always been the cleverest, the most eager -- always a step ahead of the others, always the learned and intellectual one, always the priest or the sage. His Self had crawled into this priesthood, into this arrogance, into this intellectuality. It sat there tightly and grew, while he thought he was destroying it by fasting and penitence. Now he understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought him salvation. That was why he had to go into the world, to lose himself in power, women and money; that was why he had to be a merchant, a dice player, a drinker and a man of property, until the priest and Samana in him were dead. That was why he had to undergo those horrible years, suffer nausea, learn the lesson of the madness of an empty, futile life till the end, till he reached bitter despair, so that Siddhartha the pleasure-monger and Siddhartha the man of property could die. He had died and a new Siddhartha had awakened from his sleep. He also would grow old and die. Siddhartha was transitory, all forms were transitory, but today he was young, he was a child -- the new Siddhartha -- and he was very happy. --Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
When you take an oath, you hold your soul in your hands. --Thomas More
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. --Thomas Jefferson
The only thing worth teaching is how to learn.
It's clear that saying "it's clear that..." usually just indicates the opposite.
Mortals, as always, are fools. You speak of "wars to end all wars", of "wars of peace", and of "just wars". I care not about your endless circles of words. I care only that as long as men rationalise war, the longer they will fight. And so long as men spill each others' blood, peace will remain the ultimate prisoner of war. --War
[God] may have His reasons, but He picks psychotics to do His work. --Fox Mulder, The X Files
Fools allow others to rule them. Wise men rule themselves. --Adam Warlock
Truth: I prefer the truth in any form, whether it's coated with sugar or with bile. I'll take it anyway it comes. Truth is such a rarity, like a precious diamond, and does it matter if a beautiful diamond comes in a nice velvet-cushioned box or in a pile of straw?
Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
Sine somno nihil [It is nothing, if there is no dream] --Jochen Gerz
This will prove a brave new kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing. --Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
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
We are always paid for your suspicions by finding what we suspect. --Thoreau
A difference between capitalism and communism is that in the former case, property is distributed among invididuals based on how they determine it should be distributed, whereas in the latter case, property is distributed among individuals based on how a select group of individuals decide how it should be distributed.
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock. --John Barrymore
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. --Theodore Roosevelt
People who influence others profoundly are the ones who are influenced by others in the same manner. --Ram Samudrala
All the world may not love a lover but all the world watches him. --Robert W. Chambers
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. --H.L. Mencken
Religion is a way of acceptance--an escape from the truth. Religion is 'the people's' safe haven in regards to existence. --Chelsea Richards
If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. --Robert Ingersoll
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
With great power comes great responsibility. --Spider-Man
Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. --H.L. Mencken
He who loves and runs away may live to love another day. --Carolyn Wells.
Q. "If I refuse to marry you, will you really commit suicide?"
A. "That has been my customary procedure."
--John Barrymore
I lost a good secretary and found a lousy cook. --Florello H. Laguardia
It would be a good thing if man concerned himself more with the history of his nature than with the history of his deeds. --Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German dramatist
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. --Howard Aiken
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." --Yoda
Life is too complicated not to be orderly.
There are several kinds of bonding: the chemical kind, between horse-trainer and horse, and even between brothers in a fraternity. But there is not one stronger, not one closer, than the bond between the Hacker and his Love. His thoughts are the computer's instructions, his actions are the execution of instructions, and his wishes are the machines's output. In fact, it is not even a bonding; Their essences have amalgamated into One--it is Zen.
It is those we live with and love, and should know, that elude us most. --Norman Maclean
Maybe some people on sea of matrimony wish they had missed the boat. --Charlie Chan
No man is boss in his own home, but he can make up for it, he thinks, by making a dog play dead. --W.C. Fields
One that will not reason is a bigot. One that cannot reason is a fool. One that dares not reason is a slave.
Whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division. --Nicholas of Oresme
We are victims of our own intelligence: The intelligence that invents an exercise bike to burn all the energy we didn't use sitting at our desk jobs, so that we can earn lots of money to spend on energy saving devices like TV remote controls, which turn us into sedentary sloths who have to go the gym on sunny days to ride a bicycle that doesn't go anywhere. --Allen Carr
Modern man threw a brick through his own window in order to sell himself a burgular alarm. --Allen Carr
The despairing soul is a rebel. --Joyce Carol Oates
Each man's talent is his call. There is one direction which all doors are open to him. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pandemonium did not reign; it poured. --John Kendrick Bangs
Don't wait for the last judgement---it happens everyday. --Camus
Love: A grave mental illness. --Plato
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. --Francis Bacon.
Forbidden Generosity. There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give it away to imaginary beings.
You are old enough to commit the sin. You are old enough to learn its consequences. --The Spectre
The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. --Shunryu Suzuki
A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45. --StukaFox
Brother will kill brother, spilling blood across the land.
Killing for religion, something I don't understand.
Fools like me, who cross the sea and come to foreign lands,
ask the sheep for their beliefs do you kill on god's command?" --Megadeth, Holy Wars
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. --Eleanor Roosevelt
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. --Robert Kennedy
The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. --Robert Kennedy
What's done is done. There's no use dwelling on the past. What happens in the future is what matters. Refuse to let others do the framing when you are the framer. --corollaries to the above
The first mistake people do when they want to "help create a better world" is to put themselves in a position of power to do so. --Ram Samudrala
The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control. --Ogden Nash
There are people who hate us.
They will always hate us.
If we kill them, more will take their place.
If we arrest their leaders and throw them in jail, new leaders will emerge.
What we have here is an unfortunate fact of our planet: Its dominant species combines extreme cleverness with an unreliable morality and a persistent streak of insanity. Thus it has ever been; thus it shall ever be.
One of the tropes of this tragedy is that "life will never be the same again." But nothing has changed at all. Human nature is immutable. People have been using every bit of their ingenuity to kill one another since the dawn of time. --Joel Achenback writing for The Washington Post about the hijacking disasters in America on September 11, 2001.
TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. --Jonathan Postel in RFC 793, writing about TCP
As the Internet started to come to peoples' attention everyone started looking to see if their business could be exercised on it. Journalists started looking for scandals. Politicians started to look for things to control. Lawyers started looking for people to sue.
In the early days the Internet was designed by and for the benefit of scruffy creative people: The makers and only they, on the whole, knew anything about it. Now the men in suits, the takers have moved in. It was inevitable from day one.
I was born weird: This terrible compulsion to behave normally is the result of childhood trauma.
Like Pavlov's dogs we are trained to salivate at the sound of the liberty bell.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. --Nietzsche
For my heart could not flee away from my heart, nor could I escape from myself since wherever I ran I should be followed. --St. Augustine
Corruption will never summon the inner resources needed to overcome its own base nature. --Adam Warlock
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. --Seneca
Your shadow, the white one, whom you cannot accept, and who will never forget you. --Rolf Jacobson
If the brain were simple enough to understand, man would be too simple to understand it. --Luke A. Chapman
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard
One of the most dangerous forms of human error is forgetting what one is trying to achieve. --Paul Nitze
People want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. --James F. Hind
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. --Carl Sagan
This is a fragile ball we are living on. It is a miracle and we are destroying it. --Midnight Oil
Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.
We are prisoners of our own experiences.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
A known devil is better than an unknown one.
I am because we are, and since we are therefore I am. --African Proverb
Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right. --Horace J. Brown
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. --Thomas Jefferson
Sex is the biggest nothing of all time. --Andy Warhol
If you live to the age of a hundred, you've got it made, because very few people die past the age of a hundred. --George Burns
If you could hear, at every jolt the blood
Come gargling from his froth corrupted lungs,
My friend you would not ell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori --Wilfred Owen, Dulce est Decorum Est
Better be doing science because you enjoy the day to day minichallenges, because you want to engage your self in a really difficult problem, because you really care about what the world is about and want passionately to contribute in some small part to understanding it, and because you believe that science is the greatest achievement so far of the human race and its long term best hope for survival and enlightenment. --John Moult
As for those who exalt incorruptibility, inalterability, I believe they are brought to say these things through their great desire to live a long time and through the terror they have of death. And not considering that, if men were immortal these men would not have had the chance to come into the world. They would deserve to encounter a Medusa's head , which would transform them into statues of jasper or diamond, to make them more perfect than they are....And there is not the slightest doubt that the Earth is far more perfect, being, as it is alterable,changeable, than if it were a mass of stone, even if it were a whole diamond, hard and impenetrable. --Galileo Galilei, Dialogo spora i due massimi sistemi.
Eternal must that progress be
Which nature through futurity
Decrees the human soul;
Capacious still, it still improves
As through the abyss of time it moves,
Or endless ages roll.
Its knowledge grows by every change;
Through science vast we see its range
That none may here acquire;
The pause of death must come between
And Nature gives another scene
More brilliant to admire.
Thus decomposed, or recombined,
To slow perfection moves the mind
And may at last attain
A nearer rank with that first cause
Which distant, though it ever draws,
Unequalled must remain.
--Philip Franeau, On the Powers of Human Understanding
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity. --Yeats, The Second Coming
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. --Marianne Williamson (mistakenly often attributed to Nelson Mandela) [I'm a staunch atheist for the record.]
I had a dream, when I was young, a dream of sweet illusion.
A glimpse of hope and unity, and visions of one sweet union.
But a cold wind blows, and a dark rain falls, and in my heart it shows,
look what they've done to my dream. --Queen, One Vision
The charm and grace of computing science lies not just in the theoretical aspect nor in the programming aspect. It is the amalgam that makes computing science the most exquisite of all the sciences. --Ram Samudrala
The dollar will never fall as low as what some people will do to get it. --Alfred E. Neuman
TOTAL CRIMIMALIZATION was the greatest idea of its time and was vastly popular except with those people who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws. So, of course, they had to be TRICKED INTO IT... which is one of the reasons why MUSIC was eventually made ILLEGAL. --Frank Zappa
The suburbs are when they cut down all the trees and then name the streets after them! --Alfred E Neuman
The difference between a 10 page and a 12 page paper is the type size. --Ram Samudrala
Proteins don't have a folding problem; humans do. --Ram Samudrala
Tell me why I have to be a powerslave?
I don't want to die I'm a god why can't I live on?
When the life giver dies all around is laid waste.
And In my last hour I'm a slave to the power of death. --Iron Maiden, Powerslave
When the history of this century is written, the one thing that'll stand out the most, even more than the loss of life and money due to political insipidness, is the development of Quantum Mechanics and the subsequent biological and computer revolutions. --Ram Samudrala
Beep! --vi
Let's not judge ourselves by race, religion, colour, or by sex.
Let's reach out to one another bring out our very best.
We believe in what we're sayin' so put your trust in us.
We express ourselves by playin', we're called Psychefunkapus.
--Psychefunkapus, We are the Young
And look at the two of us in sympathy, with everything we see.
I never want anything, it's easy. You buy whatever I need.
But look at my hopes, look at my dreams, the currency we've spent.
I love you, you pay my rent. --Pet Shop Boys, Rent
And the strange flavour of AI work is that people try to put together long sets of rules in strict formalisms which tell inflexible machines how to be flexible. --Douglas Hofstadter
Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.
Want to run, don't know if I can.
Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.
Daddy's lil girl ain't a girl no more.
This is outrage and it's gross.
This is getting to me and I'm drowned.
I'm a negative creep and I'm stoned! --Nirvana
This album is dedicated to all the oppressed people in this world, especially children. --Robert Owens
The view they once knew made our nooses too tight.
This justice in swine, this devil in god. So god bless my soul---
I've got total control and the crosshairs lined up dead in my sight...
I'm voting with a bullet! --Corrosion of Conformity, Vote with a Bullet
Minds that have nothing to confer find little to perceive. --Wordsworth
Religion is the opiate of the masses. --Karl Marx
Sex is the opiate of the masses. --Ram Samudrala
Television is the opiate of the masses. --Gerry Goldstein
Say no to drugs. --Nancy Reagan
The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony number 9. --Michael Hodous
Memory is the cabinet of imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council chamber of thought. --St. Basil
God does not [play] dice. --Einstein
God does play dice. --Quantum Mechanics
God does play dice, but it's loaded. --Chaos Theory
God is in the details. --John Moult
I don't know why I want to fly I try to sigh I try to cry make me high and then they try to get me down I want to buy make me fly get me high so I can try let me try little birdy start to cry so happy. --Ween, Little Birdie
Terrorism is violence used in order to create fear, that, in turn, will lead somebody else -- not the terrorist -- to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires" --David Fromkin
Growing up it all seems so one-sided, opinions all provided.
The future predecided.
Detached and subdivided in the mass production zone.
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone. --Rush, Subdivisions
Hey! Aren't you scared of me Christ? Mr. Wonderful Christ!
You're a joke, you're not the Lord, you are nothing but a fraud.
Take him away he's got nothing to say! --King Herod in Jesus Chris Superstar
They say follow your heart; follow it through.
But how can you, when it's split in two? - -Siouxsie and the Banshees, Face to Face
Based on the principle that if we were all crooks, we could at last be uniform to some degree in the eyes of THE LAW... Once we had all broken some kind of law, we'd all be in the same big happy club. --Frank Zappa
Up on my podium as the know it all scholar.
Down in my seat of judgement gavel's bang, uphold the law.
Up on my soapbox a leader out to change the world.
Down in my pulpit as the holier than-thou-could-be messenger of god! --Megadeth, Holy Wars
The heart has four chambers. --Jan Pedersen
But not one good plate reverb. --Derek Sivers
Person man, person man. Hit on the head with a frying pan.
Lives his life in a garbage can. Person man,
is depressed or is he a mess? Does he feel totally worthless?
Who come up with person man? Degraded man, person man.
--They Might be Giants, Particle Man
Then the door was open and the wind appeared.
The candles blew then disappeared.
The curtains flew, then he appeared, saying don't be afraid,
come on baby... don't fear the reaper. --Blue Öyster Cult, (Dont' Fear) The Reaper
Unfortunately people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don't know any better. --Steve Jobs
Instead of inanely repeating the old formula "respect the law," we say, "Despise law and all its attributes!" In place of the cowardly phrase "Obey the law," our cry is "Revolt against all laws!" --Peter Kropotkin
Annihilation, kill 'em all! Capitulation, watch the mighty fall.
The road to glory is lined in red, and the reason now is gone...
the battle rages on! --Deep Purple, The Battle Rages On
Our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were endowed in a higher degree than the animals of any other species with two precious facilities: the power to think and the desire to rebel. --Michael Bakunin
There lived a certain man in Russia long ago,
He was big and strong in his eyes a flaming glow.
Most people looked at him with terror and with fear,
but to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear. --Boney M, Rasputin
Isn't it ironic that Alanis Morisette's song has little of it? --M. Perotto
Safe sex, safe music, safe clothing, safe hair spray, safe ozone layer. Too late! Everything that's been achieved in the history of mankind has been achieved by not being safe. --Lemmy of Motörhead
There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule. --R. W. Gerard
So it's going to cut down on technological innovations, efficiency and so on, but it will happen to increase profits by accident. Well, that's intellectual property rights. --Noam Chomsky on GATT.
The greatest constraint on your future liberties may come not from government but from corporate legal departments laboring to protect by force what can no longer be protected by practical efficiency or general social consent. --John Perry Barlow, The Economy of Ideas
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
and the mome raths outgrabe. --Jabberwocky, from In Through the Looking Glass
Some transcend time by might and they are liberated but those who do not are lost in limbo as their moments wander for eternity up and down from one fiery dive in vast hell with venomful crimson fire to a lethagic and hazy walk in divine heaven discovering red translucent swirls delicately manifested only near dumb angels who have trusted a false god but have left... --What I put together on a fridge using the little word magnets
The world does not deserve my brilliance. --Newton?
It's hard to be kids nowadays. --Somsak Phattarsukol [This wonderfully ironic comment was made given all the temptations kids have and the abuse they can inflict on parents. My response to this is either that it's hard to be parents nowadays or perhaps I should be a kid.]
Waiting for the revolution.
Nuclear vision, genocide.
Computerise god, it's the new religion.
Program the brain, not the heart beat. --Black Sabbath, Computer God
I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth.
But now I've seen the payoffs, everywhere I look:
who do you trust when everyone's a crook?
--Queensryche, Revolution Calling
Ear Biting: It's disgusting. Not at all like the good, clean fun of hitting someone in the face over and over as hard as you can. --Jim Mullen
When the going gets tough and the stomach acids flow.
The cold wind of conformity is nipping at your nose.
Some trendy new atrocity brings you to your knees.
Come with us and we'll sail the seas of cheese. --Primus, Sailing the Seas of Cheese
If you didn't care what happened to me, and I didn't care for you,
we would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
occasionally glancing up through the rain wondering which of the buggers to blame
and watching for pigs on the wing. --Pink Floyd, Pigs on the Wing
God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods. But you could well create the overman. --Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Of course, the denotation of this usage [of stealing] is straight from the dictionary: "to appropriate (as another's conception or invention) and use as one's own." --Andrew Greenberg in misc.int-property
"[An alien] can be Jesus or Newt Gingrich, or anyone in between." --Richard Belzer
"State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: ``I, the state, am the people.'' That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life." --Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathushtra
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. --Theodore Roosevelt
Homo sapiens, oxymoron.
All are philosophers, except those who label themselves so.
Those who know, teach. Those who can, do. Those who can't either, entertain.
Thankful for the care from my fellow beings while doing what I love, desiring and toiling to ensure the most beautiful good. (What I felt after being up all night and watching Special Agent Oso with my 2.98630136 old daughter (her age today has an interesting number under the vinculum, but nothing as profound as in the Ramanujam/Hardy anecdote (it may well be there but I am too lazy to look for it)).) --on Thanksgiving Day November 25, 2010.
Daddy, you're so smart but you don't know how to play. --Umaporn Samudrala [My (then) eight year old daughter referring to the fact that I couldn't play with her My Little Pony set.]
Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names... in the end, it's up to you to decide the meaning of words spoken by others.
The ones who seek power are the least deserving of it.
You didn't require your parents' signature as a kid? --Umaporn Samudrala [My daughter, referring to all the permission slips, homeworks, etc. that we have to sign. Why do humans have to make their lives more complicated?]
The problem is with the idiots who get elected. Until the moment they do, they're all over the electorate, touching, hugging, kissing, what have you. Election day comes and they forget who put them there and make themselves King and God. It happens even with the smallest local jurisdictions.
I am grateful that others have tried and failed, particularly in science. Those efforts were informative, and without them I would not have figured out what was successful.
I was five when I looked up at the night sky and asked "why?" and after that I knew I was destined to do science.The desire to be something greater than yourself should not be confused with the desire for others to see you so.Having the power (and the so-called "right") to kill requires a person of ethics, morality, civilisation, and discipline to find a better way.A rabbit may sense "fear" and act on it in a programmed manner, but we place a lot of emphasis on context and play so much with the word "war" and use and abuse it in our daily social politicial and commercial lives that our monkey brain is entirely confused by what "fear" is. We are also behaving as biological creatures born with some amount of preprogramming that kicks in based on contexts that are ALSO misassociated. So we just have a lot of biology going on between and among humans, and between humans and the rest of the universe, that is seemingly very noisy even if you think of a single human with a singular ego, let alone billions of ego or even consciousnesses.Science is the greatest achievement of mankind. By science, I include everything from philosophy and art to farming and housebuilding. Politics, law, the military, and other professions capitalise on the inability of humans to self-govern and be compassionate. While one may argue these professions are essential, it is akin to saying that a partially effective ointment is essential to heal a pus filled sore.I went to the change the world but the world went and changed me.Mentoring is service.A cruel joke was played on human pets by evolution, where the ancestors of dogs and other animals we call pets were persuaded that we could be trusted. We can't take care of each other (overall) and our environment, what basis is there for assuming responsibility over some other poor creature?As an amateur astronomer/astrophotographer, I see the changes humans have made reflected and refracted through the ancient photons arriving from cosmic distance that strike my sensors in my camera and the photoreceptors in my eye.The universe is made aware by our awareness.The grand illusion is that our identity is derived from events that happen, sensory experiences, memories formed, emotions felt, and thoughts that drive us.Celebrity culture, worship, and lionising individual humans will be downfall of civilisation, such as it is.How deep of a void must a human be facing to look outward to satiate desire and diminish suffering, inherently knowing that external means will never suffice.The only heroes I have are either fictional or those I personally know.Intellectual Property laws are like blasting a message through a huge speaker that reaches everyone in the world, then telling the world to shut their ears, or else!In the end, the same worms will feast on us and the same wind will scatter our ashes.Nice jobs finish last.There are no jokes.On my birthday, I honour my mother every day, on this day particularly, to this day.Not my proudest quote since I think one shouldn't condemn people but instead their actions. It is here however, anyway. I have no respect for politics (even the little I feel I have to practice) and politicians.
Reagan became senile. Bush 1 already was. Clinton acted like he is. Bush 2 was inept. Obama is naive.Trump really threw this country through a wringer. [An original tongue twister.]On social media, everyone is just another opinion.We don't often get the chance to do things that are right and big, but when we do, we've got to do it. (Modifed from Warren Buffett.)
Pseudointellectual ramblings || Ram Samudrala || me@ram.org