Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #12 O.E.D.: David Lean, 1969, 3 hours 30 min. Lean's version of the Oxford Dictionary has been accused of shallowness in its treatment of a complete work. Omar Sharif tends to overact as aardvark, but Alec Guiness is solid in the role of abbacy. As usual, the photography is stunning. With Julie Christie. | |
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. -- David Bowie | |
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live" | |
The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose. -- David Lardner | |
What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them! -- David Niven, "Bring On the Empty Horses" | |
Year Name James Bond Book ---- -------------------------------- -------------- ---- 50's James Bond TV Series Barry Nelson 1962 Dr. No Sean Connery 1958 1963 From Russia With Love Sean Connery 1957 1964 Goldfinger Sean Connery 1959 1965 Thunderball Sean Connery 1961 1967* Casino Royale David Niven 1954 1967 You Only Live Twice Sean Connery 1964 1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service George Lazenby 1963 1971 Diamonds Are Forever Sean Connery 1956 1973 Live And Let Die Roger Moore 1955 1974 The Man With The Golden Gun Roger Moore 1965 1977 The Spy Who Loved Me Roger Moore 1962 (novelette) 1979 Moonraker Roger Moore 1955 1981 For Your Eyes Only Roger Moore 1960 (novelette) 1983 Octopussy Roger Moore 1965 1983* Never Say Never Again Sean Connery 1985 A View To A Kill Roger Moore 1960 (novelette) 1987 The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton 1965 (novelette) * -- Not a Broccoli production. | |
DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS. (from David Vicker's .plan) | |
LILO, you've got me on my knees! (from David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the Dominos, and Werner Almsberger) | |
"... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987 | |
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones | |
Blinding speed can compensate for a lot of deficiencies. -- David Nichols | |
Eudaemonic research proceeded with the casual mania peculiar to this part of the world. Nude sunbathing on the back deck was combined with phone calls to Advanced Kinetics in Costa Mesa, American Laser Systems in Goleta, Automation Industries in Danbury, Connecticut, Arenberg Ultrasonics in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and Hewlett Packard in Sunnyvale, California, where Norman Packard's cousin, David, presided as chairman of the board. The trick was to make these calls at noon, in the hope that out-to-lunch executives would return them at their own expense. Eudaemonic Enterprises, for all they knew, might be a fast-growing computer company branching out of the Silicon Valley. Sniffing the possibility of high-volume sales, these executives little suspected that they were talking on the other end of the line to a naked physicist crazed over roulette. -- Thomas Bass, "The Eudaemonic Pie" | |
"I hate the itching. But I don't mind the swelling." -- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying to get everyone to start saying | |
To be awake is to be alive. -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden" | |
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television." - David Letterman | |
Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship. "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report. "A barrier of water vapor! A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library! A civilized race could not have stooped so low! A civilized race would not have..." It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes. - Startide Rising, by David Brin | |
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect." - David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight" | |
On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins. From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader. "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures. And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof..." The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow deaths. - David Brin, Startide Rising | |
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you. - David Letterman | |
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the peasantry." Don't lose what you've got. Don't change. Don't take a chance, because you might end up starving to death. Play it safe. Buy just as much as you need. Don't waste time. When we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive. But when it comes down to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play the game as it must be played. - David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988 | |
Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television. - David Letterman | |
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal. The smallness of it is what's attractive. It's weird, 'cause it's so intellectually lame. It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of my life. But at the same time, it's what I do best. - Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman" | |
"There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity." - David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap" | |
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!" -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987 | |
"Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit." -- David McCord | |
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times. -- David Letterman | |
Delta: A real man lands where he wants to. -- David Letterman | |
Delta: The kids will love our inflatable slides. -- David Letterman | |
Delta: We're Amtrak with wings. -- David Letterman | |
"You know, we've won awards for this crap." -- David Letterman | |
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast | |
"When anyone says `theoretically,' they really mean `not really.'" -- David Parnas | |
"Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn't make any sudden moves around than any other city in the world." -- David Letterman | |
"Tourists -- have some fun with New york's hard-boiled cabbies. When you get to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitchhiking." -- David Letterman | |
"An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax." -- David Letterman | |
"Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin." -- David Letterman | |
"If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on television with pool cues, who would win? 1) Ricky Schroder 2) Gary Coleman 3) The television viewing public" -- David Letterman | |
Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that it is impossible to model or predict its performance, making it effectively useless for real-time systems. -- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson. | |
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret police and laws similar to those in the USSR, there are thousands of underground publications, a legal independent Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and only independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is an affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labor. There is literally a world of difference between Poland - even in its present state of collapse - and Soviet society at the peak of its "glasnost." This difference has been maintained at great cost by the Poles since 1944. -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network) to Poland | |
"There is also a thriving independent student movement in Poland, and thus there is a strong possibility (though no guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland link, should it ever come about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner attachment for a Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted apparatchiks." -- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a gateway from EARN (Eurpoean Academic Research Network) to Poland | |
David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page. George Will: I don't think astrology belongs even on the comic pages. The comics are making no truth claim. Brinkley: Where would you put it? Will: I wouldn't put it in the newspaper. I think it's transparent rubbish. It's a reflection of an idea that we expelled from Western thought in the sixteenth century, that we are in the center of a caring universe. We are not the center of the universe, and it doesn't care. The star's alignment at the time of our birth -- that is absolute rubbish. It is not funny to have it intruded among people who have nuclear weapons. Sam Donaldson: This isn't something new. Governor Ronald Reagan was sworn in just after midnight in his first term in Sacramento because the stars said it was a propitious time. Will: They [horoscopes] are utter crashing banalities. They could apply to anyone and anything. Brinkley: When is the exact moment [of birth]? I don't think the nurse is standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad. Donaldson: If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie thing. People want to know. -- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988, excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan | |
"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions." -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation | |
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule." -- David Guaspari | |
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office. -- David Broder | |
Interesting poll results reported in today's New York Post: people on the street in midtown Manhattan were asked whether they approved of the US invasion of Grenada. Fifty-three percent said yes; 39 percent said no; and 8 percent said "Gimme a quarter?" -- David Letterman | |
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces. One soldier found a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit. -- Aviation Week and Space Technology | |
That government is best which governs least. -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" | |
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. -- David Gerrold | |
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero. -- David Ellis | |
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
True to our past we work with an inherited, observed, and accepted vision of personal futility, and of the beauty of the world. -- David Mamet | |
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule." -- David Guaspari | |
What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime. -- David Letterman | |
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans": * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE" * Hourly motel rates * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some countries we could mention * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies * Our well-behaved golf professionals * Fabulous babes coast to coast | |
New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn't make a sudden move. -- David Letterman | |
Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York City. One is "Hey, taxi." Two is, "What train do I take to get to Bloomingdale's?" And three is, "Don't worry. It's just a flesh wound." -- David Letterman | |
Tourists -- have some fun with New York's hard-boiled cabbies. When you get to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitch-hiking." -- David Letterman | |
Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines. -- David Letterman | |
An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax. -- David Letterman | |
Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as artificial flowers have to flowers. -- David Parnas | |
... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect. -- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight" | |
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons. -- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist | |
Here I am again right where I know I shouldn't be I've been caught inside this trap too many times I must've walked these steps and said these words a thousand times before It seems like I know everybody's lines. -- David Bromberg, "How Late'll You Play 'Til?" | |
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#7) Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade. Question 7: What new features would you like to see in Windows 2000? A. A marquee on the taskbar that automatically scrolls the latest headlines from MSNBC and Microsoft Press Pass B. Content filtration software for Internet Explorer that will prevent my children from accessing dangerous propaganda about Linux. C. A new card game; I've spent over 10,000 hours playing Solitaire during my free time at work and I'm starting to get bored with it D. A screensaver depicting cream pies being thrown at Janet Reno, Joel Klien, David Boies, Ralpha Nader, Orrin Hatch, Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, and other conspirators out to destroy Microsoft E. A Reinstall Wizard that helps me reinstall a fresh copy of Windows to fix Registry corruptions and other known issues | |
Alan Cox Releases Quantum Kernel Submitted by Dave Finton A surprising development in the linux-kernel mailing list surfaced when Alan Cox announced the release of a 2.2 Linux kernel existing both as an official stable kernel and as a prepatch kernel. This immediately spurred the creation of two different realities (and hence two different Alan Coxes), where a kernel would not settle down to one or the other state until someone looked at it. "I think this resulted from the large number of 'final' prepatch kernels prior to the 2.2.14 release," said David Miller, kernel networking guru and gas station attendent (he'll settle down to one or the other state when someone looks at him). When word of this development spread to Microsoft, Bill Gates was extremely delighted. The Redmond, WA campus has been plagued with quantum fluctuations ever since the inception of Windows 2000 back in 1992. "Our release date has been existing in infinitely many states since the very beginning," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "This just shows the Linux operating system cannot scale to multiple realities as well as our OS." | |
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that nature with which I am acquainted. Mythology comes nearest to it of any. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
Sometimes when you look into his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving. -- David Letterman | |
The human race never solves any of its problems. It merely outlives them. -- David Gerrold | |
The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing. -- David Viscott | |
Would a giant, profit-oriented cartel lie to you? -- Top Ten List, Late Night with David Letterman | |
"After 40 Terabytes, your fingers start to hurt." - David Miller on typing | |
David Brownell wrote: > AMD told me I'd need an NDA to learn their workaround, and I've not > pursued it. (Does anyone already know what kind of NDA they use?) It varies depending on the info. They may well be able to sort out a sane NDA with you. If they dont want to then I guess it would be best if the ohci driver printing a message explaining the component has an undocumented errata fix, gave AMD's phone number and refused to load.. - Alan Cox | |
David Wagner wrote: > Is this a bad coding? Yes. Not to mention side effects, it's just plain ugly. Anyone who invents identifiers of _that_ level of ugliness should be forced to read them aloud for a week or so, until somebody will shoot him out of mercy. Out of curiosity: who was the author? It looks unusually nasty, even for SGI. - Al Viro on coding style | |
Linus, Alan - Please apply the following self-explanatory patch. + /* LynuxWorks are politely reminded that removing copyright + notices is an offence under the Copyright Design and + Patents Act 1988, and under equivalent non-UK law in + accordance with the Berne Convention. */ + printk("Portions (C) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc.\n"); - David Woodhouse on linux-kernel | |
But I do know, that an Alan at home, co-working with his under-ground cluster of gnomes, does a hell-of-a-lot more good for free software than an Alan in a US-prison as yet another victim of "justice". - David Weinehall discussing the DMCA/SSSCA on linux-kernel | |
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around. -- David Lodge, "The British Museum is Falling Down" | |
"They are both businesses - if you have given them enough money, I'm sure they'll do whatever the hell you ask:->" -- David Welton | |
We must know, we will know. -- David Hilbert | |
Libtool shared library portability is only slightly more believable than perpetual motion machines. Especially on AIX :)." -- David Leimbach | |
"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial." -- David Letterman | |
Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of discovering them over and over and over. -- David Nichols | |
DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS. -- David Vicker's .plan | |
LILO, you've got me on my knees! -- David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the Dominos, and Werner Almsberger | |
> Where in the US is Linus? He was in the "Promise Land". -- David S. Miller <davem@caip.rutgers.edu> | |
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller | |
It is not enough that I should succeed. Others must fail. -- Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's [Also attributed to David Merrick. Ed.] It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. -- Gore Vidal [Great minds think alike? Ed.] | |
Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools. -- Henry David Thoreau | |
The Worst Car Hire Service When David Schwartz left university in 1972, he set up Rent-a-wreck as a joke. Being a natural prankster, he acquired a fleet of beat-up shabby, wreckages waiting for the scrap heap in California. He put on a cap and looked forward to watching people's faces as he conducted them round the choice of bumperless, dented junkmobiles. To his lasting surprise there was an insatiable demand for them and he now has 26 thriving branches all over America. "People like driving round in the worst cars available," he said. Of course they do. "If a driver damages the side of a car and is honest enough to admit it, I tell him, `Forget it'. If they bring a car back late we overlook it. If they've had a crash and it doesn't involve another vehicle we might overlook that too." "Where's the ashtray?" asked on Los Angeles wife, as she settled into the ripped interior. "Honey," said her husband, "the whole car's the ash tray." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
It was a JOKE!! Get it?? I was receiving messages from DAVID LETTERMAN!! YOW!! |