+Some of Bdale's Favorite Quotations
+===================================
+
+These are things I've tripped over in my life,
+that I've chosen to pick up and carry with me...
+
+On Life
+-------
+
+<p>
+"That which hinders your task is your task."
+
+<p>
+"For every vision, there is an equal and opposite revision."
+<br>-- "Thal's Law", which I first heard quoted by Lyle Johnson
+
+<p>
+"Any problem on earth can be solved with the careful application of high
+explosives. The trick is not to be around when they go off."
+<br>-- from the movie Valkyrie
+
+<p>
+"I have the luxury of waiting on the sidelines to see how the contest
+comes out. But <em>someone</em> has to make choices, take risks and
+commit resources, or nothing new will ever be created."
+<br>-- Brian Hayes, writing about "The Memristor" in American Scientist
+
+<p>
+"Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silence."
+<br>-- Will Henry
+
+<p>
+"Kids are more nimble than wise..."
+<br>-- Nancy Gibbs, in a Time opinion piece
+
+<p>
+"I just want you to be motivated by the magnitude of the opportunity."
+<br>-- Mark Hurd, in an HP internal meeting
+
+<p>
+"Love is an activity, not a feeling.
+True love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves
+for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish."
+<br>-- the character Misha, in Stephen L. Carter's The Emperor of Ocean Park
+
+<p>
+"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise,
+risking more than others think is safe,
+dreaming more than others think is practical,
+and expecting more than others think is possible."
+<br>-- Anonymous
+
+<p>
+"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with
+a mosquito in the room."
+<br>-- Anita Roddick
+
+<p>
+"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed."
+<br>-- Michael Pritchard
+
+<p>
+"What has violence ever accomplished?
+What has it ever created?
+No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet...
+What we need is not division; what we need is not hatred,
+but love and compassion toward one another and a feeling of
+justice toward those who suffer within our community, whatever
+their color or faith.
+Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years
+ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life
+of this world."
+<br>-- Robert F. Kennedy
+
+<p>
+"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
+make it shorter."
+<br>-- Blaise Pascal
+
+<p>
+"I try to say what I think I mean."
+<br>-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem Living in the Moment</p>
+
+<p>
+"Super-geeks are cool."
+<br>-- Elizabeth Garbee, 24 October 2005
+
+<p>
+"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something else is
+more important than fear."
+<br>-- Ambrose Redmoon</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me just say that, if you ever have the choice of putting your words in
+powerpoint or having them carved into 30-foot high marble, I'd say go for
+the marble."
+<br>-- <a href="http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/making.html">Peter Norvig</a>
+
+<p>
+"My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them."
+<br>-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by Han Tzu in Shadow of the Giant</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun."
+<br>-- Def Poet Common </p>
+
+<p>
+"How can you make informed decisions ... ? The key seems to be to gather
+experts who are knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter, and
+have them cooperatively discuss a series of questions designed to explore
+the limits of technical feasibility.
+They must strive to reach the best decision rather than to persuade
+each other."
+<br>-- <a href="http://www.norvig.com/lancet.html">Peter Norvig</a>
+
+<p>
+"Recorded music is just a way to fill in gaps when you can't get real music."
+<br>-- Keith Packard </p>
+
+<p>
+"Great leaders don't play by the existing rules."
+<br>-- Mark Hurd, in an HP internal meeting
+
+<p>
+"Doesn't he know who I think I am?"
+<br>-- Phil Collins </p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh my god. The impossible has happened. My mother has forwarded to me a
+joke that not only have I not seen before, but is actually sort of funny."
+<br>-- Eric Schwartz, on IRC </p>
+
+<p>
+"Whenever I try to recall that long-ago first day at school only one memory
+shines through: my father held my hand."
+<br>-- Marcelene Cox, American writer, from Ladies' Home Journal (1954). </p>
+
+<p>
+"Why should self-indulgent nonsense -- whatever its professed political
+orientation -- be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement?"
+<br>-- Alan D. Sokal, in
+<a href="http://skepdic.com/sokal.html"> A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies </a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
+intelligent are full of doubt."
+<br>-- Bertrand Russell</p>
+
+<p>
+"People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be
+great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue -- this
+is what will endear him to the locals."
+<br>-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by a young Columbus in Pastwatch</p>
+
+<p>
+"Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain
+is traded for a worthy price."
+<br>-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by an older Columbus in Pastwatch</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake."
+<br>-- Alfred Hitchcock</p>
+
+<p>
+"Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket."
+<br>-- Andrew Carnegie</p>
+
+<p>
+"There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them."
+<br>-- Niels Henrik David Bohr</p>
+
+<p>
+"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it."
+<br>-- Old Chinese Proverb </p>
+
+<p>
+"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
+<br>-- Robert J. Hanlon </p>
+
+<p>
+"Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice."
+<br>-- Mike Albaugh</p>
+
+<p>
+"In any endeavour it is a fact that you have to succeed with the people who
+are willing to participate."
+<br>-- Fitch R. Williams, in a rec.crafts.metalworking post about teachers</p>
+
+<p>
+"we begin to stop / in order simply / to begin / again."
+<br>-- Maya Angelou, the end of her poem "Late October"</p>
+
+<p>
+"Poetry dovetails contradictions."
+<br>-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem Feeling and Form</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd remember everything we said, when I thought we were saying everything."
+<br>-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem The Regent Park Sonnets</p>
+
+<p>
+"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid
+thing to want to do."
+<br>-- Elvis Costello, in an interview by Timothy White entitled "A Man out of Time Beats the Clock." Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52.</p>
+
+<p>
+"No. Must. Not. Flame. Him."
+<br>-- Andreas Schuldei, trying to keep a debian-devel discussion civil...</p>
+
+<p>
+"Every time you open your mouth in this thread, you amplify your ignorance."
+<br>-- Ben Armstrong </p>
+
+<p>
+"When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things
+ work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles."
+<br>-- Esther Dyson </p>
+
+<p>
+"If everything were first-rate, what would we have to complain about?"
+<br>-- Doug McKenna </p>
+
+<p>
+"We make things... and it's so much fun!"
+<br>-- Robert D. Garbee </p>
+
+<p>
+"The only thing that happens if you wait, is that you get older."
+<br>-- Mario Andretti </p>
+
+<p>
+"Some things are worth doing even if they aren't safe."
+<br>-- Eric Smith
+
+<p>
+"Beer should really taste like beer."
+<br>-- Nigel Croxon, about 80% of the way through a
+<a href="http://www.chilibeer.com/">Cave Creek Chili Beer</a>
+
+<p>
+"For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance."
+<br>-- Cartoon Law of Physics X
+
+<p>
+A free press is one where it's ok to state the conclusion you're led to by
+the evidence.
+<br>-- Bill Moyers
+
+<p>
+"The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an
+acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies;
+who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of
+his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself
+humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter
+wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements;
+who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed
+follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather
+than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is
+sacred and virtue safe."
+<br>-- John Walter Wayland</p>
+
+<p>
+"If ever a World Government should come into existence, it had better be a
+government designed to be run by crooks rather than a government designed to
+be run by gentlemen. Gentlemen are too often in short supply."
+<br>-- Freeman J. Dyson, in his book Infinite in All Directions
+
+<p>
+"My job is to, like, think beyond the immediate."
+<br>-- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 21 April 2004
+
+<p>
+"Regardless of talent, the mark of a professional is the ability to
+share knowledge."
+<br>-- Elaine Richards
+
+<p>
+"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
+he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
+<br>-- Terry Pratchett
+
+<p>
+"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
+<br>-- Auric Goldfinger, in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Goldfinger
+
+<p>
+"Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers."
+<br>-- Theodore Ts'o, in a posting about <a href="http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/12/28/debian-philosophy-and-people/">Debian, Philosophy, and People</a>
+
+On Programming
+--------------
+
+<p>
+"It takes more keystrokes to enter a windows license key than it takes
+to do a complete Debian desktop install!"
+<br>-- Joey Hess
+
+<p>
+"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming,
+is not worth knowing."
+<br>-- Perlis</p>
+
+<p>
+"We now have a body of software accessible to everybody on earth so robust
+and so profound in its possibilities, that we are a few man months away from
+doing whatever it is that anybody wants to do with computers all the time."
+<br>-- Eben Moglen, from a speech given at Harvard Law School
+
+<p>
+"There are so many clever things that could be done."
+<br>--Dan Shearer </p>
+
+<p>
+"I have often thought that programmers who have
+been taught about Big-O without also being taught about the
+importance of constant factors, are like teenagers who have
+been taught how to start a car and get it into gear, but
+not how to get the condoms out of the glove-box before moving
+into the back seat."
+<br>--Mike Albaugh </p>
+
+<p>
+"Debian: everything looks broken until you realize it's just the only distro
+done correctly..."
+<br>--Dann Frazier, explaining something about Debian on IRC
+
+<p>
+"Looking at [the build excuses for a particular Debian package] shows
+a dep-wait chain of despair(tm)"
+<br>--James Troup, on the debian-hppa mailing list
+
+<p>
+"I have a mouse, but don't have a mouse driver for MINIX and have never felt
+the need to write one. Typing "rm x y z" is a lot faster than clicking
+five times and then having to convince the system that you really, truly,
+mean it and this is not a mistake and that you are consenting adult over 18
+and that you completely understand the consequences and you still want to
+do it."
+<br>-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, in his personal
+<a href="http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html">FAQ</a></p>
+
+<p>
+"You know, in ten years, "no-code" will probably mean a completely different
+thing when applied to a radio amateur. If we're still here."
+<br>-- <a href="mailto:maggie@voicenet.com"> Margaret Leber </a> K3XS</p>
+
+<p>
+"From my experience, in Forth
+I'm constantly struggling with the problems I need to solve, trying out
+alternatives, prototyping extensions, laying out tests; while in C I'm just
+struggling with the code, compiler and environment."
+<br>-- Marcel Hendrix</p>
+
+<p>
+"Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' -- they have
+'arguments' -- and they always win them."
+<br>--Things Likely to be Overheard If You Hire a Klingon Programmer</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't confuse the random PC architecture with the way that real systems work."
+<br>--Matthew Wilcox</p>
+
+<p>
+"System administrators pray to Eris, afterwards, very softly, thanking
+her for staying away..."
+<br>--Kees J Bot, in comp.os.minix, talking about preparing for an upgrade...
+
+On Porsches
+-----------
+
+<p>
+"If you gotta look at it like an investment, you picked the wrong car."
+<br>-- Stan Hanks</p>
+
+<p>
+"Old enough to remember when sex was safe and race cars were dangerous."
+<br>-- <a href="mailto:carcaresp@aol.com">Larry Reynolds</a></p>
+
+Things I've Said
+----------------
+
+<p>
+"I need to redirect stdout to /dev/porcelain, be back in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>
+"Unfortunately, that means the email I did have was mostly spam... and
+since it's really not clear to me that increasing my breast size would
+increase my confidence, I didn't bother reading most of it."</p>
+
+Things Said About Me
+--------------------
+
+<p>
+"I was all set to get annoyed, and then I thought,
+'No, that's what they pay Bdale for ...'"
+<br>--Eric Schwartz</p>
projects / web / gag.com / commitdiff