Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars." -- Johnny Carson | |
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun. -- P.J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April Fool's column. | |
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to seek.... The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor, it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival denomination would get an unfair advantage. - John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908 | |
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun." -- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language" | |
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession, conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge, we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense of cosmic unity. When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs [temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of the religious tradition, the parallels are striking. The same is true of the recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against invoking spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice. -- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255 | |
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars. Verily, the learned men are the heirs of the Prophets." -- A tradition attributed to Muhammad | |
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. -- Winston Churchill | |
Godwin's Law (prov. [Usenet]): As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. | |
Jack-and-Jill Party: A Squire tradition; baby showers to which both men and women friends are invited as opposed to only women. Doubled purchasing power of bisexual attendance brings gift values up to Eisenhower-era standards. -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" | |
The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality. -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man" | |
It BASICally Sucks Older versions of MS-DOS came with bundled programming languages including GW-BASIC and QBasic. Windows XP continues the Microsoft tradition of ruining budding programmers with horrible programming tools by including XPBasic, an interpreted language in which all of the customary BASIC keywords have been replaced with advertising slogans. Nike has paid a handsome amount to Microsoft for "keyword rights". Instead of saying PRINT "HELLO WORLD", XPBasic programmers must now type JUST DO IT "HELLO WORLD". Other common XPBasic statements include WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GOTO 20 TODAY? and DIM ARRAY(1 TO 20) AS INTEGER BROUGHT TO YOU BY VERIZON WIRELESS. -- from Humorix's review of Windows XP (eXceptionally Pathetic) | |
> I can just imagine Xmas at the Torvalds residence, with their annual > tradition of having the kids scream... But dad, other kids have the l > lights strung around the trees, not the computer.... I don't think you get the full picture. I suspect what gets strung up on the trees at Christmas if Linus does too much hacking is ... Linus - Alan Cox | |
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself. -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!" | |
(It is an old Debian tradition to leave at least twice a year ...) -- Sven Rudolph | |
The departing division general manager met a last time with his young successor and gave him three envelopes. "My predecessor did this for me, and I'll pass the tradition along to you," he said. "At the first sign of trouble, open the first envelope. Any further difficulties, open the second envelope. Then, if problems continue, open the third envelope. Good luck." The new manager returned to his office and tossed the envelopes into a drawer. Six months later, costs soared and earnings plummeted. Shaken, the young man opened the first envelope, which said, "Blame it all on me." The next day, he held a press conference and did just that. The crisis passed. Six months later, sales dropped precipitously. The beleagured manager opened the second envelope. It said, "Reorganize." He held another press conference, announcing that the division would be restructured. The crisis passed. A year later, everything went wrong at once and the manager was blamed for all of it. The harried executive closed his office door, sank into his chair, and opened the third envelope. "Prepare three envelopes..." it said. | |
Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers. -- Larry Wall in <199708252256.PAA00105@wall.org> |