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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.

These are great mysteries.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
                -- Rob Pike, on X.

Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years.  He was half right.
                -- Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
                -- Jim Gettys
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes
and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
                -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
--Arthur C. Clarke
"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
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
                -- Arthur C. Clarke
Bubble Memory, n.:
        A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's intelligence.
        See also "vacuum tube".
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
        The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
        dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
        putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
                -- Tennessee Williams
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
        As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left.  Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
                -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in
which there is absolutely nothing.
                -- Descartes
Nuclear powered vacuuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.
                -- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation,
                   manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York
                   Times, June 10, 1955.
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
        The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth.  However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.  
        In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall.  On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
        The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
        "It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point.  "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor.  "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him.  "Suck?  Suck?  Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out.  Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair.  "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
        Where the three-body problem is solved,
        Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
        And the cold virus never evolved.                        (chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
        Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
        Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
        And a kilogram weighs half a pound.                        (chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
        No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
        When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
        If we just find a big enough wrench.                        (chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
        And living up here is a bore.
        Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
        'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!                        (chorus)

CHORUS:        Home, home on LaGrange,
        Where the space debris always collects,
        We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
        Solar power and zero-gee sex.
                -- to Home on the Range
"Nature abhors a Vacuum"

  -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
Microsoft should switch to the vacuum cleaner business where people
actually want products that suck.

   -- Bruno Bratti
Microsoft Acquires Nothing

REDMOND, WA -- In an unprecedented move, Microsoft refrained from acquiring any
rival companies for a full week. "I can't believe it," one industry analyst
noted. "This is the first time in years that I haven't read any headlines about
Microsoft acquiring something."

The lack of Microsoft assimilation this week left a vacuum in computer industry
publications. "Microsoft acquisition stories make up 10% of our headlines," an
editor at Ziff-Slavis said. "We had to scramble to fill this void. We ran some
controversial Jessie Burst columns instead, hoping that we could recoup ad
revenue from people reading all the flames in the Talk Back forums. Jessie
Burst forums account for 15% of our total ad revenue."
You know your apartment is small...
        when you can't know its position and velocity at the same time.
        you put your key in the lock and it breaks the window.
        you have to go outside to change your mind.
        you can vacuum the entire place using a single electrical outlet.
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor.
As President I have to go vacuum my coin collection!
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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