A man with no regrets has either no past or no conscience. Anonymous I feel that I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could. Dorothy Day, "The Long Loneliness" From the very beginning, I never thought of myself as anybody special. And whatever I've accomplished throughout my life, when I look in the mirror, I still see myself as a hamburger cook. Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's It's fine to hate evil. It's wrong to label those you merely disagree with as evil. Jonah Goldberg I never actually thought I was funny. You may think, "I don't have any talent." I guarantee you, I had not talent. None. Steve Martin A good mathematics teacher should tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but never ever ever the whole truth. Adrian Riskin Real life people are God's apology for the internet. David Burge The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between parties either but right through the human heart. Alexander Solzhenitsyn They say mathematics is passed down from your parents. Let me tell ya, my kid's got about a 40/40 chance of passing algebra. Larry the Cable Guy I'd rather be unhappy than have a false, lying sort of happiness. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Charity is no substitute for justice withheld. St. Augustine The human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. Alexander Solzhenitsyn What's a decimal point or two between friends? Ian Stewart I'll bet future civilizations find out more about us than we'd like them to know. Calvin and Hobbes Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. Calvin and Hobbes I let my mind wander, and it didn't come back. Calvin and Hobbes You can't have gone to a good school. Special subjects at our school included French, music, ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision, and washing clothes. the Griffin, Alice in Wonderland Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic. Tweedledee, Through the Looking Glass Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. The Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass When I make a word do a lot of work like that, I always pay it extra. Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass Can you do division? Divide a loaf by a knife -- what's the answer to that? the White Queen, Through the Looking Glass Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains? ... the dog's temper. the Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass Proof is for mathematicians and whiskey. internet forum You can't buy happiness with money. But you can buy ice cream. (And isn't that kind of the same thing?) Bop's Frozen Custard Money can't buy happiness. It has to be converted into photographic equipment first. comment at Digital Photography Review C++ does not feel pain. It can't be reasoned with. Starting a fight is a big mistake. If youwant to use C++, you must learn to love it the way it is, in particular, manage your memory manually. C++ Frequently Questioned Answers You don't always make people uncomfortable because they're wrong, stuffy, or rigid. Sometimes you make people uncomfortable because you intimidate them, and sometimes you make people uncomfortable because you're a jerk. Anonymous The worst sort of desperation take hold of society when it concludes that it is pointless to live honestly. Corrado Alvaro People throw the Gini coefficient of income inequality around as if it were the last word in economic policy, yet they never mention that (a) Gini was an honest-to-God Fascist who authored "The Scientific Basis of Fascism," and (b) many of the nations with the lowest inequality are best known for their squalid living conditions. Anonymous The real attraction of politics to many people is that it gives them moral permission to hate. Kevin D. Williamson Many candidates begin life as reformers. First they promote a little reform, then a medium reform, and then a great big reform. What they really need is choloroform. Gracie Allen The problem is often assuming that because you've cited a number, you've relieved yourself of the burden of interpreting the evidence. Nate Silver Pointers are real. They're what the hardware understands. Someone has to deal with them. You can't just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis. James Mickens, "The Night Watch" Make no mistake, I don't want to write systems software in a language like C++. Similar to the Necronomicon, a C++ source code file is a wicked, obscure document that's been filled with cryptic incantations and obscure knowledge. When it's 3 A.M., and you've been debugging for 12 hours, and you encounter a virtual static friend protected volatile templated function pointer, you want to go into hibernation and then find the people who wrote the C++ standard and bring ruin to the things that they love. James Mickens, "The Night Watch" 21st-century moviemakers don't seem to have any frame of reference except earlier movies -- most seem to grow up in a kind of multiplex version of Plato's Cave, blissfully unsullied by reality. Kyle Smith, movie review for "War for the Planet of the Apes" I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Roy Batty, "Blade Runner" Eight dollars a week or a million a year -- what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi" People complain that logic is too abstract, but if someone puts a gun to your head and exclaims, "Your money or your life!" you'd better hope that's not an "inclusive" but an "exclusive" or. Anonymous Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. Reverend Gaius Helen Mohiam, "Dune" Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history. Bene Gesserit Coda, "Chapterhouse: Dune" There are weapons you cannot hold in your hands. You can only hold them in your mind. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose. Bene Gesserit Coda, "Chapterhouse: Dune" We become what we do. Lucilla, "Chapterhouse: Dune" All of us are descendants of people who did nasty things. We don't like to think of barbarians in our ancestry but they're there. Rebecca, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Producing perfection from imperfection is the highest of art forms. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they attain commanding power. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" It is possible to know so much about a subject that you become totally ignorant. Mentat Text Turo (dicto), "Chapterhouse: Dune" Wherever we stand, we are only stewards. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Silence is often the best thing to say. Bene Gesserit humorist, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Trying to avoid complications often creates them. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock. Bene Gesserit watchdog, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Delegate heavily to the same people and you fall into bureaucracy. "Chapterhouse: Dune" Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible. Lucilla, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Laws convey them myth of enforced change. A bright new future will come because of this law or that one. Laws enforce the future. Regulations are believed to enforce the past. Lucilla, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Corruption wears infinite disguises. Tleilaxu Thu-zen, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by its puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition. Mentat Text One (dicto), "Chapterhouse: Dune" Do not depend on theory if your life is at stake. "Chapterhouse: Dune" Moral decisions are always easy to recognize. They are where you abandon self-interest. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" Where do we draw the line? Bellonda, with her antique spectacles when she could have had artificial eyes or any of numerous prosthetics, coted with her body. "This is what it means to be human. Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it spirits away." "Chapterhouse: Dune" Your habits always come hunting after you. The self you construct will haunt you. A ghost wandering around in search of your body, eager to possess you. We are addicted to the self we construct. Slaves to what we have done. Darwi Odrade, "Chapterhouse: Dune" 'Tis strange, and often to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths: to win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest confidence. Banquo, "Macbeth" I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear. Quentin, "The Sound and the Fury" They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will do when their desires become words. Quentin, "The Sound and the Fury"