Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk. -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon" | |
In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards. -- Mark Twain | |
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. -- Shakespeare | |
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it. -- G.L. Glegg, "The Design of Design" | |
In practice, failures in system development, like unemployment in Russia, happens a lot despite official propaganda to the contrary. -- Paul Licker | |
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine" | |
Practice yourself what you preach. -- Titus Maccius Plautus | |
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along. -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987 | |
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder child. - Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD | |
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth. - George Jacob Holyoake | |
"I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_ | |
Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway. -- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate | |
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before). -- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_ | |
Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches. -- The Best of Will Rogers | |
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would behave very differently from those who now hold it -- when, in truth, in order to get power we would have to become very much like them. (Lenin's fatal mistake, both in theory and in practice.) | |
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organisation of hatreds. -- Henry Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams" | |
This is a country where people are free to practice their religion, regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys... | |
When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice. -- Otto Von Bismarck | |
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation): We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are, and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for. | |
XIIdigitation, n.: The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" | |
Obscurism: The practice of peppering daily life with obscure references as a subliminal means of showcasing both one's education and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
Caf'e Minimalism: To espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting into practice any of its tenets. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
Recreational Slumming: The practice of participating in recreational activities of a class one perceives as lower than one's own: "Karen! Donald! Let's go bowling tonight! And don't worry about shoes ... apparently you can rent them." -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
I've always made it a solemn practice to never drink anything stronger than tequila before breakfast. -- R. Nesson | |
Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, beer is unusually pale and clear. Problem: Glass empty. Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer. Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, and the front of your shirt is wet. Fault: Mouth not open when drinking or glass applied to wrong part of face. Action Required: Buy another beer and practice in front of mirror. Drink as many as needed to perfect drinking technique. -- Bar Troubleshooting | |
A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential." Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors." A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti- personnel devices." You probably call them bombs. At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired. After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it) only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously sent him. -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE) | |
Practice is the best of all instructors. -- Publilius | |
Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted. -- Morris Kline | |
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. | |
Mathematicians practice absolute freedom. -- Henry Adams | |
This isn't true in practice -- what we've missed out is Stradivarius's constant. And then the aside: "For those of you who don't know, that's been called by others the fiddle factor..." -- From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture. | |
When you overesteem great hackers, more users become cretins. When you develop encryption, more users become crackers. The Guru leads by emptying user's minds and increasing their quotas, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. When users lack knowledge and desire, management will not try to interfere. Practice not-looping, and everything will fall into place. | |
Slow day. Practice crawling. | |
The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil. -- Heywood Broun | |
An OS/2 professional visits a seminar for Windows 95. During the practice lesson Bill Gates asks him: "What do you like about Windows95?" He answers, "That YOU have to use it." | |
Brief History Of Linux (#5) English Flame War The idea behind Slashdot-style discussions is not new; it dates back to London in 1699. A newspaper that regularly printed Letters To The Editor sparked a heated debate over the question, "When would the 18th Century actually begin, 1700 or 1701?" The controversy quickly became a matter of pride; learned aristocrats argued for the correct date, 1701, while others maintained that it was really 1700. Another sizable third of participants asked, "Who cares?" Ordinarily such a trivial matter would have died down, except that one 1700er, fed up with the snobbest 1701 rhetoric of the educated class, tracked down one letter-writer and hurled a flaming log into his manor house in spite. The resulting fire was quickly doused, but the practice known as the "flame war" had been born. More flames were exchanged between other 1700ers and 1701ers for several days, until the Monarch sent out royal troops to end the flamage. | |
By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart. -- Confucius | |
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob. -- William F. Buckley | |
If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? | |
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. | |
"I would suggest you to read through the following book and files: * Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming" * Documentation/CodingStyle * drivers/net/aironet4500_proc.c and consider, erm, discrepancies. On the second thought, reading K&R might also be useful. IOW, no offense, but your C is bad beyond belief." - Al Viro | |
"In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are different." - Larry McVoy | |
Alan Cox wrote: > In theory however i2o is a standard and all i2o works alike. In practice i2o > is a pseudo standard and nobody seems to interpret the spec the same way, the > implementations all tend to have bugs and the hardware sometimes does too. That's a pretty good description of standards in general, at least when it comes to hardware :-) - Jens Axboe's interpretation of standards | |
<Peaker> the difference between theory and practice is just a lot of work - from #offtopic (the offtopic chat channel of #kernelnewbies) | |
Alexander Viro wrote: > You mean that you are unable to read any of the core kernel source? > That would explain a lot... Were you born rude, or did you have to practice it? - Richard Gooch on linux-kernel | |
Practice non-action. Work without doing. Taste the tasteless. Magnify the small, increase the few. Reward bitterness with care. See simplicity in the complicated. Achieve greatness in little things. In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy. In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds. The sage does not attempt anything very big, And thus achieved greatness. Easy promises make for little trust. Taking things lightly results in great difficulty. Because the sage always confronts difficulties, He never experiences them. | |
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; It has no equal. The weak can overcome the strong; The supple can overcome the stiff. Under heaven everyone knows this, Yet no one puts it into practice. Therefore the sage says: He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them. He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves to be king of the universe. The truth often sounds paradoxical. | |
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which I happen to have in my top desk drawer. Some of the Tips for Better Driving are worth considering, to wit: [110.13]: "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not to interfere with oncoming traffic." [22.17b]: "Learning to change lanes takes time and patience. The best recommendation that can be made is to go to a Celtics [basketball] game; study the fast break and then go out and practice it on the highway." [41.16]: "Never bump a baby carriage out of a crosswalk unless the kid's really asking for it." | |
The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity? Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization. -- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace," Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768. | |
I hope the ``Eurythmics'' practice birth control ... |