Quotes

Who should I thank? My so-called “colleagues,” who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit “fooling around with computers,” go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?

My God, no one could blame me—no one!—if I went off the edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn’t get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack ‘n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I’m not twitching. I’m controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.

If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I’d probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think.

Oh yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself.

— Olin Shivers, Scheme Shell Reference Manual, Cambridge, 1994

Besides those who have directly helped me with this book, I’d like to acknowledge two of the greatest benefactors of mankind in general and myself in particular. The first of these is the greatest writer I know, Ayn Rand. She had the ability to explain complex philosophical concepts in language so simple that anyone could understand them; if I can explain programming half as clearly, I will consider myself a great success. Even more important, she laid the foundation for solving what is possibly the greatest conundrum of philosophy: how to connect what is with what ought to be.

Finally, I want to thank L. Ron Hubbard for his discoveries and inventions in the field of the mind and spirit. Even a small fraction of his myriad contributions to knowledge would qualify him for the first rank of friends of mankind; in total, they elevate him without question to the top of the list.

— Steve Heller, Who’s Afraid of Java, 1997

I just hate to be pushed around by some fucking machine.

—Ken Thompson

Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.

—W. Edwards Deming

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

—Giacomo Leopardi

It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

— Mary Wollstonecraft

…Yes, I would like it to happen. I live in fear of it happening, in the same way that Colombian drug barons live in fear that everyone’s going to make cocaine legal…

“Should it rain beer?” and “If it were to rain beer, would I be prepared to cope with that eventuality?” My answer is, “Yes, it should rain beer; Yes, I would be prepared to cope with that eventuality; No, it’s NEVER going to happen.”

— Stuart Langridge

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

— G.B. Shaw

Tears flowed from my eyes like Ted Kennedy’s bladder after nickel beers at the Senate booze parlor.

— Gabriel

You finally made it home \ Draped in the flag that you fell for [sic]…

It’s fucking hopeless.

— Lamb of God / Ashes of the Wake

Naturally the common people don’t want war…but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

— Hermann Goering

What does it mean that the most powerful of all psychedelic hallucinogens is a part of normal human metabolism?

— Terence McKenna

When I was growing up my mother kept telling me we’re just friends…

I tell ya I was an ugly kid. I was so ugly that my Dad kept the kid’s picture that came with the wallet he bought.

— Rodney Dangerfield

1. A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
2. An inclined plane is a slope up.
3. A slow pup is a lazy dog.

QED: A sheet of paper is a lazy dog.

— Willard Espy, “An Almanac of Words at Play”

From the Fortune Files

The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100 showed that all had these things in common:

1. They all had moderate appetites.
2. They all came from middle class homes.
3. All but two of them were dead.

While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their correctness never does.

If you flaunt it, expect to have it trashed.

The Seventh Commandments for Technicians: Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.

What do I consider a reasonable person to be? I’d say a reasonable person is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes that into account when dealing with others. Implicit in this definition is the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others.