Quotes

Various quotes I saw and liked:

• "I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's." - source unknown
• "If you never fail, you are not taking enough risks." - (Dede, 1993).
• "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." - either Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut or Fnord Bjørnberger
• "Talk is cheap because supply always exceeds demand." - source unknown
• "Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit." - Robert Heinlein
• "Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won't." - source unknown
• "When all is said and done ... there is usually more said than done." - source unknown
• "Real innovation happens with the small guys." - source unknown
• "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte
• On the Matrix Revolutions: "The Wachowski brothers have delivered a dud so disappointing, they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion."
• "Time is the only truly finite resource from a human perspective. As technology has progressed, distances have been conquered, vast energies harnessed, but old Father Time is still inescapable. As a result, we place great value on just how much time is taken to accomplish anything." - WiPEOUT
• "Anyone who says that money isn't important is spending someone else's." - Hampton's Law
• "The road less travelled is often less travelled for a very good reason" - Jerry Seinfeld
• "You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem." - Edwards' Law
• "Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful." - Erwin Tomash
• "Ideas have no value. Execution is what matters most." - Paraphrasing of Loïc Le Meur and Krzysztof Kowalczyk.
• Fermi's Solution: "Any sufficiently advanced civilization either destroys itself or transcends to superintelligence."
• "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." - E. B. White
• "If you are 20 and you aren't a communist you have no heart, but if you are 30 and you still are a communist, you lack rationality." - source unknown.
• Macintosh dictum: the user should never have to tell the machine anything that it knows or can deduce for itself.
• "Ideas are cheap, but turning them into reality is brutally hard work." - posted to a discussion board.
• "Never underestimate the power of broke, bored, determined Uni students." - posted to a discussion board.
• "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." - Basil King.
• "It is hard to get the world to throw away stuff they've already bought and that still works. Being twice as good isn't enough; if you really want people to trash their current equipment you need to be 10 times as good." - Bob Cringely, 2004.
• "Life is uncertain, so always eat dessert first." - source unknown.
• C.f. Edison's famous adage: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
• "What resists, persists." - Lao Tsu 6th Century B.C.
• "If it's not tested, it's broken." - Bruce Eckel.
• "People optimize locally - that is, they do what's best for themselves." - Eric Allman.
• "One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn't pay well, for reasons of supply and demand." - from Paul Graham
• "Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the fear that you have something to lose." - Steve Jobs
• "Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards." -- Soren F. Petersen
• "All you have to decide is what you're going to do with the time you are given." - Gandalf
• "Have you ever seen one of these [NIH] grant applications? We're lucky Einstein didn't have to fill one out or God knows what 'E' would equal." - seen on the Internet.
• "Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone else to do the other 95% so you can sue them." - email sig seen on Internet.
• "There are two types of people in this world... Those who finish what they start, and" - slogon on T-shirt.
• "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars he should start his own religion." - L Ron Hubbard, spoken in 1950 at a writer's convention, 4 years before he founded the Church of Scientology.
• "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell.
• "It's not the principle of the thing, it's the money!" -- Movie producer in "King Kong".
• "First class, is what's wrong honey. It used to be a better meal, now it's a better life." -- Dorothy in "Jerry Maguire" (1996).
• "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" -- Mr Hadden in "Contact" (1997).
• "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair.
• "Hell is Other People's Code" -- unknown.
• "Be the change you want to see in the world." -- Gandhi.
• "Hydrogen is an odorless colorless gas which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward R Harrison.
• "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -- President Calvin Coolidge.
• "Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- Plato.
• "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -- Mark Twain.
• "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain.
• "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent." -- A. Gary Shilling.
• "There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about, and those nobody uses." -- Bjarne Stroustrup.
• "in an extended fight, one tends to become more like one's enemy" -- LWN.net
• "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." -- William Gibson
• "Rooster one day, feather duster the next." -- Figure of speech, possibly Australian.
• "Not all smart people work at Sun Microsystems." -- Bill Joy.
• "All of man’s difficulties are caused by his inability to sit quietly in a room by himself." -- Blaise Pascal.
• "If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians." -- Warren Buffett
• "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." -- John Stuart Mills
• "Everyone should act like any kindness they do does not require anything in return." -- Brett Cannon