The story you are about to see is a fib. But it's short. --mathnet Somewhere there's danger. Somewhere there's injustice. Somewhere else, the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do. --the doctor (sylvester mccoy) You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. -- flonda scott maxwell I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. -- kurt vonnegut The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other to a standstill. --robert anton wilson "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics." --david l. goodstein It is insufficiently considered that men more often require to be reminded than informed. --samuel johnson She taught him the hidden dharma of playing catch with a rubber ball, and the veiled mystery of games of tag. --mahabharata (rishyasringa) We have them just where they want us. --james tiberius kirk When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. --hunter s. thompson He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot. --groucho marx whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. boldness has genius, power and magic in it. --johann von goethe The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. --alfred adler (austrian psychologist, 1870-1937) Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. --pericles of athens The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea. --norman augustine I think that when the aliens come they will look like us, talk like us and think like us. We'd better have some bloody big guns waiting for them. --b.liddicott@ic.ac.uk Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. -- andre gide "We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with a large number of software packages but this is in plain English and the rest are in legalese. We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all but our lawyers made us." -- andrew.cmu.edu anon-ftp disclaimer "If it weren't for my lawyer, I'd still be in prison. It went a lot faster with two people digging." --mister boffo Constitutional government should work like fairy lights in a swamp -- luring the ambitious and immiring them in its bogs. --jim henley Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. --andrew lias The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. -- thomas paine (1737-1809) Beware the man of one book. -- st. thomas aquinas To accomplish our destiny it is not enough merely to guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us. --alexis carrel If you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you add a teaspoon of sewage to a barrel of wine, you get sewage. This, my son, is entropy. --anonymous "Eat me." --lewis carroll I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her. --a New York City detective Here in Germany, we don't have revolutions until things have gotten so bad that the revolution can be announced on official placards posted up on all street corners by the police. -- German deputy, Nov. 1917 I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used.... Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? --j.r.r. tolkien, 'on fairy-stories' andrew lang lecture, univ. of st. andrews 1938 "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." --groucho marx (1895-1977) It's good to have double standards, in case one of them breaks. --thomas kettenring An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex. -- aldous huxley Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys on a million typewriters...and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare... --blair houghton Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. --mark twain Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. --oscar wilde "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." --g.k. chesterton "USENET is not a right." "USENET is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail." --ed vielmetti & chip salzenberg Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea-- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. --gene spafford, spaf@cs.purdue.edu Cthulhu 2000! -- Why Vote for the Lesser Evil? --anonymous They're inhabitants of alt.tasteless . . . where they march to a decidedly different drummer, and, when they're done marching, usually shoot him. --dave ratcliffe Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. --william somerset maugham My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. --vladimir nabokov Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball. --deborah tannen Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. --antoine de saint-exupery The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue. --bertrand russell Love is like a snowmobile flying over the frozen tundra that suddenly flips, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come. --matt groening I'm as confused as a baby in a topless bar. --unknown Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone...the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way. --j. michael straczynski "This was a test of the tywong flaming system. This was only a test. Had this been a real flame, no lucid points would have been attempted." --jon blow, blojo@xcf.berkeley.edu It doesn't TAKE all kinds; we just HAVE all kinds. --michael kalen smith, mksmith@taproot.win.net How can you stand not to push your own head into the cereal bowl in the morning and spare yourself the misery and ignominy of a life as a pitiable circus clown? --felix gallo, rhodesia@wixer.bga.com Never let your friends drive you crazy; you know it's within walking distance. --anonymous We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again. --david grabiner When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. --desiderius erasmus Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery. --joe haldeman If you can't make someone happy, make them chocolate fudge cake. --duke euphoria "ian crowther" de'gryn, trans-galactic megapope euphoria@junkpile.demon.co.uk The only mortals who ever entered Barad-dur and came back unharmed in body and soul was a pair of Iluvatar's Witnesses. Only days after their visit did Sauron realize that the "Minas Tirith" he had bought from them was only a pamphlet. --thomas kettenring Talent develops in quiet places; character, in the full current of human life. --johann von goethe A Renaissance man diffuses to refine himself. --steve hug So, let me get this straight. You're worried about this thing you call . . . copyright? What does this strange word mean? --joshua babcock I'm surrounded by idiots of my own design. --joel hodgson Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from ref fiat. --metlay A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile when a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. --antoine de saint-exupery, "flight to arras" The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible. --mark twain where subtlety is impossible, we will have to use cream pies. --david brin, _the uplift war_ Money talks. Usually it says, 'Bend over.' --solomon short "My name is Homer Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to--ooh, donuts!" --anonymous He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit. --anonymous Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is. --c. g. jung (1875-1961) "That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder." --bill watterson, "calvin & hobbes" There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. --albert einstein True words are not beautiful; Beautiful words are not true. Competence does not persuade; Persuasion is not competent. The sage is not learned; The learned man is not wise. The Man of Calling does not heap up possessions. The more he does for others, The more he possesses. The more he gives to others, The more he has. The TAO of Heaven is `furthering without causing harm'. The TAO of the Man of Calling is to be effective without quarrelling. --lao tzu Make the most of yourself, for that is all of you that there is. --unknown "Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he formatted his life. --unknown A Discordian is anyone willing to look at the windmills and concede that they might be giants. --Holy Temple of the Sts. John, from the Principia Discordia, SJG Edition.