From efcf486416ea9b41fa12249fb957676cf0b2caaf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Bdale Garbee Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:44:04 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] pull quotes file over from old structure --- bdale/quotes.mdwn | 397 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 397 insertions(+) create mode 100644 bdale/quotes.mdwn diff --git a/bdale/quotes.mdwn b/bdale/quotes.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 0000000..803624e --- /dev/null +++ b/bdale/quotes.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,397 @@ +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 +------- + +

+"That which hinders your task is your task." + +

+"For every vision, there is an equal and opposite revision." +
-- "Thal's Law", which I first heard quoted by Lyle Johnson + +

+"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." +
-- from the movie Valkyrie + +

+"I have the luxury of waiting on the sidelines to see how the contest +comes out. But someone has to make choices, take risks and +commit resources, or nothing new will ever be created." +
-- Brian Hayes, writing about "The Memristor" in American Scientist + +

+"Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silence." +
-- Will Henry + +

+"Kids are more nimble than wise..." +
-- Nancy Gibbs, in a Time opinion piece + +

+"I just want you to be motivated by the magnitude of the opportunity." +
-- Mark Hurd, in an HP internal meeting + +

+"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." +
-- the character Misha, in Stephen L. Carter's The Emperor of Ocean Park + +

+"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." +
-- Anonymous + +

+"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with +a mosquito in the room." +
-- Anita Roddick + +

+"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed." +
-- Michael Pritchard + +

+"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." +
-- Robert F. Kennedy + +

+"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to +make it shorter." +
-- Blaise Pascal + +

+"I try to say what I think I mean." +
-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem Living in the Moment

+ +

+"Super-geeks are cool." +
-- Elizabeth Garbee, 24 October 2005 + +

+"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that something else is +more important than fear." +
-- Ambrose Redmoon

+ +

+"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." +
-- Peter Norvig + +

+"My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them." +
-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by Han Tzu in Shadow of the Giant

+ +

+"I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun." +
-- Def Poet Common

+ +

+"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." +
-- Peter Norvig + +

+"Recorded music is just a way to fill in gaps when you can't get real music." +
-- Keith Packard

+ +

+"Great leaders don't play by the existing rules." +
-- Mark Hurd, in an HP internal meeting + +

+"Doesn't he know who I think I am?" +
-- Phil Collins

+ +

+"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." +
-- Eric Schwartz, on IRC

+ +

+"Whenever I try to recall that long-ago first day at school only one memory +shines through: my father held my hand." +
-- Marcelene Cox, American writer, from Ladies' Home Journal (1954).

+ +

+"Why should self-indulgent nonsense -- whatever its professed political +orientation -- be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement?" +
-- Alan D. Sokal, in + A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies +

+ +

+"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the +intelligent are full of doubt." +
-- Bertrand Russell

+ +

+"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." +
-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by a young Columbus in Pastwatch

+ +

+"Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain +is traded for a worthy price." +
-- Orson Scott Card, a realization by an older Columbus in Pastwatch

+ +

+"Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake." +
-- Alfred Hitchcock

+ +

+"Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket." +
-- Andrew Carnegie

+ +

+"There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them." +
-- Niels Henrik David Bohr

+ +

+"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it." +
-- Old Chinese Proverb

+ +

+"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." +
-- Robert J. Hanlon

+ +

+"Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice." +
-- Mike Albaugh

+ +

+"In any endeavour it is a fact that you have to succeed with the people who +are willing to participate." +
-- Fitch R. Williams, in a rec.crafts.metalworking post about teachers

+ +

+"we begin to stop / in order simply / to begin / again." +
-- Maya Angelou, the end of her poem "Late October"

+ +

+"Poetry dovetails contradictions." +
-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem Feeling and Form

+ +

+"I'd remember everything we said, when I thought we were saying everything." +
-- Marilyn Hacker, in the poem The Regent Park Sonnets

+ +

+"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid +thing to want to do." +
-- 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.

+ +

+"No. Must. Not. Flame. Him." +
-- Andreas Schuldei, trying to keep a debian-devel discussion civil...

+ +

+"Every time you open your mouth in this thread, you amplify your ignorance." +
-- Ben Armstrong

+ +

+"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." +
-- Esther Dyson

+ +

+"If everything were first-rate, what would we have to complain about?" +
-- Doug McKenna

+ +

+"We make things... and it's so much fun!" +
-- Robert D. Garbee

+ +

+"The only thing that happens if you wait, is that you get older." +
-- Mario Andretti

+ +

+"Some things are worth doing even if they aren't safe." +
-- Eric Smith + +

+"Beer should really taste like beer." +
-- Nigel Croxon, about 80% of the way through a +Cave Creek Chili Beer + +

+"For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance." +
-- Cartoon Law of Physics X + +

+A free press is one where it's ok to state the conclusion you're led to by +the evidence. +
-- Bill Moyers + +

+"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." +
-- John Walter Wayland

+ +

+"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." +
-- Freeman J. Dyson, in his book Infinite in All Directions + +

+"My job is to, like, think beyond the immediate." +
-- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 21 April 2004 + +

+"Regardless of talent, the mark of a professional is the ability to +share knowledge." +
-- Elaine Richards + +

+"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." +
-- Terry Pratchett + +

+"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." +
-- Auric Goldfinger, in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Goldfinger + +

+"Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers." +
-- Theodore Ts'o, in a posting about Debian, Philosophy, and People + +On Programming +-------------- + +

+"It takes more keystrokes to enter a windows license key than it takes +to do a complete Debian desktop install!" +
-- Joey Hess + +

+"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, +is not worth knowing." +
-- Perlis

+ +

+"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." +
-- Eben Moglen, from a speech given at Harvard Law School + +

+"There are so many clever things that could be done." +
--Dan Shearer

+ +

+"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." +
--Mike Albaugh

+ +

+"Debian: everything looks broken until you realize it's just the only distro +done correctly..." +
--Dann Frazier, explaining something about Debian on IRC + +

+"Looking at [the build excuses for a particular Debian package] shows +a dep-wait chain of despair(tm)" +
--James Troup, on the debian-hppa mailing list + +

+"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." +
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, in his personal +FAQ

+ +

+"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." +
-- Margaret Leber K3XS

+ +

+"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." +
-- Marcel Hendrix

+ +

+"Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' -- they have +'arguments' -- and they always win them." +
--Things Likely to be Overheard If You Hire a Klingon Programmer

+ +

+"Don't confuse the random PC architecture with the way that real systems work." +
--Matthew Wilcox

+ +

+"System administrators pray to Eris, afterwards, very softly, thanking +her for staying away..." +
--Kees J Bot, in comp.os.minix, talking about preparing for an upgrade... + +On Porsches +----------- + +

+"If you gotta look at it like an investment, you picked the wrong car." +
-- Stan Hanks

+ +

+"Old enough to remember when sex was safe and race cars were dangerous." +
-- Larry Reynolds

+ +Things I've Said +---------------- + +

+"I need to redirect stdout to /dev/porcelain, be back in a minute."

+ +

+"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."

+ +Things Said About Me +-------------------- + +

+"I was all set to get annoyed, and then I thought, +'No, that's what they pay Bdale for ...'" +
--Eric Schwartz

-- 2.30.2