Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling the president one of the latest talking computers. Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the speed of light?" Computer: 186,282 miles per second. Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?" Computer: George Washington. President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question. Where is my father?" Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia. President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty years ago!" Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just landed a twelve pound bass. | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. - Francis Bellamy, 1892 | |
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors. - Thomas Jefferson | |
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by mean of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States) | |
"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much more the American spirit." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger | |
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States. -- Vic Gold | |
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. -- Francis Bellamy, 1892 | |
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey | |
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. -- Robert Orben Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. -- Jack Paar | |
Q: How does the Polish Constitution differ from the American? A: Under the Polish Constitution citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, but under the United States constitution they are guaranteed freedom after speech. -- being told in Poland, 1987 | |
Q: Why is Poland just like the United States? A: In the United States you can't buy anything for zlotys and in Poland you can't either, while in the U.S. you can get whatever you want for dollars, just as you can in Poland. -- being told in Poland, 1987 | |
Fortune's Guide to Freshman Notetaking: WHEN THE PROFESSOR SAYS: YOU WRITE: Probably the greatest quality of the poetry John Milton -- born 1608 of John Milton, who was born in 1608, is the combination of beauty and power. Few have excelled him in the use of the English language, or for that matter, in lucidity of verse form, 'Paradise Lost' being said to be the greatest single poem ever written." Current historians have come to Most of the problems that now doubt the complete advantageousness face the United States are of some of Roosevelt's policies... directly traceable to the bungling and greed of President Roosevelt. ... it is possible that we simply do Professor Mitchell is a not understand the Russian viewpoint... communist. | |
Decemba, n: The 12th month of the year. erra, n: A mistake. faa, n: To, from, or at considerable distance. Linder, n: A female name. memba, n: To recall to the mind; think of again. New Hampsha, n: A state in the northeast United States. New Yaak, n: Another state in the northeast United States. Novemba, n: The 11th month of the year. Octoba, n: The 10th month of the year. ova, n: Location above or across a specified position. What the season is when the Knicks quit playing. -- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary | |
No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery. | |
There must be at least 500,000,000 rats in the United States; of course, I never heard the story before. | |
To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am -- a man of my peculiar weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions -- can be so happy as he can be in the United States. Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States and not be happy. -- H.L. Mencken, "On Being An American" | |
I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another. -- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis. The Cardinals backed down and played. | |
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II." -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar" | |
I have a map of the United States. It's actual size. I spent last summer folding it. People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6". -- Steven Wright | |
The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo. -- Art Buchwald | |
Top Ten Changes If Linus Torvalds Achieves World Domination 10. That annoying Linus character from the Peanuts cartoons would be killed off 9. New fashion style: Scantily clad females, even in twenty below weather 8. Forget Disney World, say hello to Penguin World! 7. Late Show with Linus Torvalds 6. High schools offer classes on kernel hacking 5. Microsoft stock certificates traded as rare collectors' items, along with Confederate money and Roman coins 4. Beowolf Clusters for everyone! 3. Computers no longer come with reset buttons 2. United States of Linusia 1. Three words: Open Source Beer | |
This nation is sinking into the quicksand of the Paperwork Age, a postmodern world in which judges issue meta-injuctions against other judges who issue injuctions against lawyers who file lawsuits every 3.2 minutes. It's an age where lawyers design ballots forms and then proceed to argue over how to count them. The United States has bluescreened. A fatal exception error occured on Election Night, and now all of our unsaved work has been lost. -- Jon Splatz, Humorix's Pundit and Social Commentator, ranting about the 2000 US Presidential Election From Hell and the dreaded "Lawyerclysm" | |
"Oops," Says MPAA President Recently, the United States filed a legal brief in support of the MPAA's argument that linking to the DeCSS source code is not protected by the First Amendment. At the time, the MPAA was ecstatic. But not any longer. The tables have turned: the Federal government has filed a lawsuit against the movie industry, arguing that many Hollywood-produced movies 'link' to illegal content. The MPAA is now desperately wrapping itself up in the Bill of Rights. "Murder is illegal. Showing a murder in a movie -- or, rather, 'linking' to it -- is also illegal," explained a spokesperson for the Coalition Of Angry Soccer Moms In Support Of Brow-Beating Movie Industry Executives, an interest group that has backed the government's lawsuit. | |
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We need to find out where we are." Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me where we are?" The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately fifty feet in the air!" George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer". Replies Harry, "How can you tell?". "Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally useless!" That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer". | |
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. -- U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10. (Bill of Rights) | |
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" | |
By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were still five feet between rails. It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard, in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set, great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere was possible. -- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957 | |
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" | |
XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off. XII: It costs a lot to build bad products. XIII: There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two. XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight. XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems. -- Norman Augustine | |
XLVII: Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters. XLVIII: The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing. XLIX: Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds. L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times as long as the official's who created it. LI: By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more government workers than there are workers. LII: People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again. -- Norman Augustine |