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.