Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding- forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw. -- James Dickey | |
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. -- Robert Benchley | |
'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky! -- Robert James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix | |
Television -- the longest amateur night in history. -- Robert Carson | |
The old complaint that mass culture is designed for eleven-year-olds is of course a shameful canard. The key age has traditionally been more like fourteen. -- Robert Christgau, "Esquire" | |
Naked children have never played in _o_u_r fountains, and I.M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66. -- "Learning from Las Vegas", Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour | |
To err is human, To purr feline. -- Robert Byrne | |
Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... (rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup) | |
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside. -- Robert Cringely, InfoWorld | |
Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert Heinlein (Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.) | |
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth | |
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President | |
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" | |
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. -- Robert Heller | |
What the hell is it good for? -- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968 | |
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. - Robert Bly | |
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals. You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them. -- Robert Lucky | |
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly. In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket, achieving an altitude of 41 feet. In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth. In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon in Apollo 11." -- Michael Collins Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum | |
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined, hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension." -- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2 | |
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice." -- Robert Green Ingersoll | |
"Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch." -- Robert Orben | |
"Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings. The expectations are always high, and the results usually disappointing." -- Robert Orben | |
UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages. In the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a time. And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs, which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL. Applications can be developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional systems. Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or RPG, the most tedious of the third generation lanaguages. "UNIX Relational Database Management: Application Development in the UNIX Environment" by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen. Prentice Hall Software Series. Brian Kerrighan, Advisor. 1988. | |
"An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the day when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings and the God of Gods. -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts... I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim. -- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility," New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988 | |
"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth | |
"For a male and female to live continuously together is... biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition." -- Robert Briffault | |
"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'" -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." -- Robert G. Ingersoll | |
"The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..." -- Robert J Woodhead (trebor@biar.UUCP) | |
If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom. -- Robert Frost | |
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 | |
Majorities, of course, start with minorities. -- Robert Moses | |
Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of farmers in America." -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits" | |
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. -- Robert D. Sprecht, Rand Corp. | |
What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority. -- Robert Altman | |
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten. -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" | |
Burn's Hog Weighing Method: (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank. (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks. -- Robert Burns | |
If the ends don't justify the means, then what does? -- Robert Moses | |
If we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of an oncoming train. -- Robert Lowell | |
What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you. -- Robert Frost [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to AST's.] | |
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony. -- Robert Benchley | |
Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays. -- Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink", ed. D. Wynn | |
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness. -- Robert M. Hutchins | |
Photographing a volcano is just about the most miserable thing you can do. -- Robert B. Goodman [Who has clearly never tried to use a PDP-10. Ed.] | |
"The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country ..." -- Robert J Woodhead | |
I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck. -- graffito in Los Angeles On a clear day, U.C.L.A. -- graffito in San Francisco There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. -- Robert Orben | |
After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments. Harvey Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject with Millikan. Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in Physics Today, June 1982, page 43. In it, Fletcher claims that he was the first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil. According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan. -- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles" Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923. | |
Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't. -- Robert Orben | |
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity. -- Robert Firth "One, two, five." -- Monty Python and the Holy Grail | |
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word. -- Robert Heinlein | |
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert Heinlein | |
There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. -- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923 | |
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat. -- Robert Fuoss | |
A bunch of the boys were whooping it in the Malemute saloon; The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune; Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou. -- Robert W. Service | |
Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach, Or what's a heaven for ? -- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto" | |
And miles to go before I sleep. -- Robert Frost | |
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain For promised joy. -- Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785 | |
Every night my prayers I say, And get my dinner every day; And every day that I've been good, I get an orange after food. The child that is not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He is a naughty child, I'm sure-- Or else his dear papa is poor. -- Robert Louis Stevenson | |
I have no doubt the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins-- The other kind don't matter. -- Robert W. Service | |
I would like to know What I was fencing in And what I was fencing out. -- Robert Frost | |
Like corn in a field I cut you down, I threw the last punch way too hard, After years of going steady, well, I thought it was time, To throw in my hand for a new set of cards. And I can't take you dancing out on the weekend, I figured we'd painted too much of this town, And I tried not to look as I walked to my wagon, And I knew then I had lost what should have been found, I knew then I had lost what should have been found. And I feel like a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford I'm as low as a paid assassin is You know I'm cold as a hired sword. I'm so ashamed we can't patch it up, You know I can't think straight no more You make me feel like a bullet, honey, a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford. -- Elton John "I Feel Like a Bullet" | |
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction, ice Is also great And would suffice. -- Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice" | |
The Junior God now heads the roll In the list of heaven's peers; He sits in the House of High Control, And he regulates the spheres. Yet does he wonder, do you suppose, If, even in gods divine, The best and wisest may not be those Who have wallowed awhile with the swine? -- Robert W. Service | |
The lights are on, but you're not home; Your will is not your own; Your heart sweats, Your teeth grind; Another kiss and you'll be mine... You like to think that you're immune to the stuff (Oh Yeah!) It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough; You know you're gonna have to face it, You're addicted to love!" -- Robert Palmer | |
The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing, And surly Winter grimly flies. Now crystal clear are the falling waters, And bonnie blue are the sunny skies. Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning, The ev'ning gilds the oceans's swell: All creatures joy in the sun's returning, And I rejoice in my bonnie Bell. The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer, The yellow Autumn presses near; Then in his turn come gloomy Winter, Till smiling Spring again appear. Thus seasons dancing, life advancing, Old Time and Nature their changes tell; But never ranging, still unchanging, I adore my bonnie Bell. -- Robert Burns, "My Bonnie Bell" | |
The trouble with you Is the trouble with me. Got two good eyes But we still don't see. -- Robert Hunter, "Workingman's Dead" | |
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. -- Robert W. Service | |
To err is human, To purr feline. -- Robert Byrne | |
Under the wide and starry sky, Dig my grave and let me lie, Glad did I live and gladly die, And laid me down with a will, And this be the verse that you grave for me, Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill. -- Robert Loius Stevenson, "Requiem" | |
We've tried each spinning space mote And reckoned its true worth: Take us back again to the homes of men On the cool, green hills of Earth. The arching sky is calling Spacemen back to their trade. All hands! Standby! Free falling! And the lights below us fade. Out ride the sons of Terra, Far drives the thundering jet, Up leaps the race of Earthmen, Out, far, and onward yet-- We pray for one last landing On the globe that gave us birth; Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth. -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941 | |
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention. -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman", 26/10 1792 | |
Robert Tappen Morris, Jr., got six months in jail for crashing 10% of the computers that Bill Gates made $100 million crashing last weekend. | |
A friend is a present you give yourself. -- Robert Louis Stevenson | |
Can you buy friendship? You not only can, you must. It's the only way to obtain friends. Everything worthwhile has a price. -- Robert J. Ringer | |
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. -- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man" | |
I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be toddling along." It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle. -- Robert Benchley | |
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life. -- Robert Pante, fashion consultant | |
No man is useless who has a friend, and if we are loved we are indispensable. -- Robert Louis Stevenson | |
Shame is an improper emotion invented by pietists to oppress the human race. -- Robert Preston, Toddy, "Victor/Victoria" | |
Sometimes I get the feeling that I went to a party on Perry Lane in 1962, and the party spilled out of the house, and came down the street, and covered the world. -- Robert Stone | |
There is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else. --Robert Louis Stevenson: Immortelles | |
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not. -- Robert Benchley | |
Youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind... a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. -- Robert F. Kennedy | |
Didn't you hear? I think Linus broke the news awhile back: Alan has the uncanny ability to fork() himself infinitely many times. And he has no resource contention, so he scales O(1). - Robert Love on linux-kernel | |
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Robert Heinlein | |
My ritual differs slightly. What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry | |
Never raise your hand to your children -- it leaves your midsection unprotected. -- Robert Orben | |
One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old enough to give you presents they make at school. -- Robert Byrne | |
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. -- Robert A. Heinlein | |
<robert> i understand there are some reasonable limits to free speech in america, for example I cannot scream Fire into a crowded theatre .. But can i scream fire into a theatre with only 5 or 6 poeple in it ? | |
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. -- Robert Frost | |
It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it. -- Justice Robert H. Jackson | |
Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach, Or what's a heaven for ? -- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto" | |
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks, tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks: "Just lie down on the floor and keep calm." -- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You" | |
Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love" | |
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt someone. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together. -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten" | |
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it. -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" | |
Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... -- Robert Manners, rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk, in comp.os.linux.setup | |
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back the when it begins to rain. -- Robert Frost | |
A freelance is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps. -- Robert Benchley | |
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. -- Robert Benchley | |
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 | |
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve. -- Robert Frost | |
"Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work" -- Robert Orben | |
Fear is the greatest salesman. -- Robert Klein | |
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits. -- Robert Louis Stevenson | |
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill. -- Robert Heller | |
The greatest productive force is human selfishness. -- Robert Heinlein | |
If Robert Di Niro assassinates Walter Slezak, will Jodie Foster marry Bonzo?? | |
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast"). -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" | |
Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away. -- Robert Orben |