Fun_People Archive
19 Jan
Useless Quotes Vol V (T - Y)

Date: Thu, 19 Jan 95 18:23:19 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Useless Quotes Vol V (T - Y)

[Yup, that's right, there was no Vol I (A-B) and there probably will be no Vol
VI (Z).  Really, I'm doing it for your own good -- Honest!  However there will
be a "Useless Quotes Revisited - Everyone's A Critic" posting.  So send in all
those corrections, additions, and quibbles today...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

The program is absolutely right; therefore the computer must be wrong.

The Programmers' Cheer --
Shift to the left, shift to the right!
Pop up, push down, byte, byte, byte!

The Queue Principle:
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood
that you are standing in the wrong line.

There are few people more often in the wrong than those who cannot
endure to be thought so.

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
		-- Mark Twain [or was that Disraeli?]

There are many intelligent species in the universe.  They all own cats.

There are many people today who literally do not have a close personal friend.

There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence
of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally
competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make
some other part of hell comfortably cool.  This is obviously impossible.
		-- Richard Davisson

There are no straight lines in space.
		-- A. Einstein

There are no straight lines in space
		-- W. Allen

There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
truth without lying.

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
			-- Disraeli [or was that Mark Twain?]

There are three schools of magic.
    One:  State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries;
that's philosophy.
    Two:  Record many facts.  Try to find a pattern.  Then make a wrong
guess at the next fact; that's science.
    Three:  Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by
Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.

There are three ways to get something done:
	(1) Do it yourself.
	(2) Hire someone to do it for you.
	(3) Forbid your kids to do it.

There are two ways of teaching people: 
	You can teach them how to think, 
	or you can teach them what to think.
Socrates taught people how to think, 
Jesus taught people what to think....

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
		-- George Bernard Shaw

The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.

There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
tied during the month of April.

There is a saying among trial lawyers: "Never ask a question unless you are
already SURE of the answer."  For Dungeon Masters/Game Masters that should be
Never roll the dice unless you're sure the outcome is acceptable."  For
computer scientists, it reads: "Unless you know what to do with a error
condition, never test for it."
		-- Eric Holtman, info-unix mail

There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
		-- Mark Twain

There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, 
if they don't care who gets the credit.
		-- Anonymous

There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
abuse it.  So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
war hold him in check.  And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
		-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.

There is no right way to do something wrong.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
		-- Goethe

     There once was a king who ruled his country long, wisely, and well.
The king had a son whom he hoped would someday rule the land.  He also
wished in his heart that the son ould be wise and compassionate.  One day
he said to the prince:
     "If you promised that you would give a certain women anything, even
half of your kingdom, and then she demanded the life of your best
friend, what would your decision be, my son?"
     The young prince thought for a moment and then said, "I would tell her
that the life of my best friend did not lie in the half of the kingdom
that I had promised."
     The king knew that his son would be a great king.

There once was an old man from Esser,
Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
	It at last grew so small,
	He knew nothing at all,
And now he's a College Professor.

There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.  Too bad it's not a fence.

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
		-- Dr. Who

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
		-- Will Rodgers

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
		-- Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

The words of the prophets were written on the subway walls  
		-- Simon & Garfunkel
The words of the profits were written on the studio walls
		-- Rush

The world is coming to an end.  Please log off.

The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!

They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!

They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really.  They'd be difficult to like.
		-- Avon

They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!

Things are so bad now that the Poles are telling economist jokes.

Things will be bright this evening.  A cop will shine a light in your face.

Think "honk if you're a telepath."

Think twice before speaking. But don't say "think think click click".

This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, 
and not enough hunchbacks

This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.  If this had been an
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?

This is the LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!

This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life, you
would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
great force.
		-- Dorothy Parker

Time was invented so that you don't have to do everything all at once.
Space was invented so you don't have to do everything all in the same
place.

To be great is to be misunderstood.
		--- Emerson

Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper,
a cook, a cheering squad, and another paycheck.  When a woman 
marries, she gets a boarder.

To err is human; to debug, divine.
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
		--- L. Peter Deutsch [among others]

To generalize is to be an idiot.
		-- William Blake

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
people, two of them absent.

To never see a fool, you lock yourself in an empty room 
and break all the mirrors. 

Too clever is dumb.
		-- Ogden Nash

To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.

To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?

Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
		-- Frank Lloyd Wright

Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
		-- Walt Kelly

Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate.  The first man
said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation."  The
second man said, "He bit it himself."  Nasrudin withdrew to his
chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear.  He succeeded
only in falling over and bruising his forehead.  Returning to the
courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
dismissed.  If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
must pay three silver pieces."

Two penguins walk into a bar, which is really stupid, 'cause the second
one should have seen it.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

University, n.:
	Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
	usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you
	how to fix it, and ...

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense
		-- e.e. cummings

Unquestionably, there is progress.  The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
		-- H. L. Mencken

I know I'm no special, but any part of town,
someone could smile at me then ... shake my hand then ... gun me down.
		-- Joe Jackson - Night and Day

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
		-- Doug Larson

Vail's Second Axiom:
	The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
	amount of work already completed.

Van Roy's Law:
	An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

Veni, Vidi, Visa.

Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.

Vote anarchist

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
		-- Mark Twain

Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
	(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas.  Which one asked for the clean glass?"

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
		-- George Orwell, <1984<

Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up.
		-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83

Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.

Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
		-- John F. Kennedy

Wasting time is an important part of living.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy.  The question which divides us is
whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.  My own feeling
is that it is not crazy enough. 
		-- Niels Bohr

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
		-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"

We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct.  It dies all by itself.  The
bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism?
		-- Fidel Castro

We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
		-- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988.

We can defeat gravity.  The problem is the paperwork involved.

We can found no scientific discipline, nor a healthy profession on the
technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and IBM.
		-- Edsger Dijkstra

We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased.  My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
		-- James E. Day, Postmaster General

We have met the enemy, and he is us.
		-- Walt Kelly

We have only 2 things to worry about:  That things will never get back
to normal, and that they already have.

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, but others judge us by
what we have already done.
		-- Longfellow

Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
	And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
	I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
	Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
	I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
	But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
	I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
		-- Core Dumped Blues

Well now that we have seen each other," said the Unicorn, "if you'll believe
in me, I'll believe in you.  Is that a bargain?"
		-- Lewis Carroll

We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.

We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.

Westheimer's Discovery:
	A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
	couple of hours in the library.

Wethern's Law:
	Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away.  The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away.  You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
		-- Andy Rooney

What color is a chameleon on a mirror?

What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?

Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!
		-- Mom

What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the entrance?

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?  In that case, I
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
		-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?  Or what's
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
		-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"

What is the difficulty with writing a PDP-8 program to emulate Jerry Ford?
Figuring out what to do with the other 3K.

What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.

What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
		-- The Doctor

What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
		-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"

"Whatever you do, don't cross the streams."
"Why?"
"It would be bad."
"Wait a minute, I'm a little fuzzy on this whole good/bad issue."
"Imagine life as you know it ending and every molecule in your body exploding
 at the speed of light."
"Okay"
"That's bad."
"Thanks, Egon.  Important safety tip."
		--- Ghost Busters

When a Banker jumps out of a window, 
jump after him -- that's where the money is. 
		-- Robespierre

When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," 
it's the money.
		-- Kim Hubbard

When all other means of communication fail, try words.

When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask?  Well, last year, I
think it was a Tuesday.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally.
		-- A. Lincoln

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
		--Oscar Wilde

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
		-- Mark Twain

When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't happen.
		-- Richard Nixon as a boy (on the Teapot Dome scandal)

When in doubt, tell the truth.
		-- Mark Twain

When in doubt, use brute force.
		-- Ken Thompson

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
		-- Woody Allen

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
		-- Mark Twain

When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
and I find I mind it less and less."
		-- Louise Andrews Kent

When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
		-- Daniel B. Luten

When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical
		-- Jon Carroll

When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
		-- Donald Douglas

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
		-- Thomas Paine

When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you.
When it is unspoken, you reign over it.

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
		-- Winston Curchill, On formal declarations of war

When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
		-- Edgar R. Fiedler

When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
		-- The Wall Street Journal

When you reach what you have been striving for, you may find that having is not
such a great thing as wanting.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.

Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.

While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
admission to someone else.

While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
form of misery.

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

Whistler's Law:
	You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.

Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.

Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?

Why did the Roman Empire collapse?  What is the Latin for office automation?

Why is the alphabet in that order?  Is it because of that song?

Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough 
to love you knowing nothing?
		-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, 
but when they are out they are another's.
		 --- Susanna Martin, executed for witchcraft, 1681.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?
		-- Oscar Wilde

Wiker's Law:
	Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.

With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
try to be a fraud and a half.
		-- Otto von Bismark

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
		-- Ransom K. Ferm

Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.

Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
		-- Dumas

Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
	From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
	in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from
	exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat
		-- Lewis Carrol

"Wrong," said Renner.
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"

Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
Xerox never comes up with anything original.

Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

"You boys lookin' for trouble?"
"Sure.  Whaddya got?"
	 -- Marlon Brando, "The Wild Ones"

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
		-- Booker T. Washington

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.  You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
		-- Lauren Bacall

You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
		-- Dagwood Bumstead

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
		-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

You'd better beat it.  You can leave in a taxi.  If you can't get a
taxi, you can leave in a huff.  If that's too soon, you can leave in a
minute and a huff.
		-- Groucho Marx

You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You'll learn a lot today.

You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him.
		-- Ed Howe

You must realize that the computer has it in for you.  The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.

You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
know how seldom they do.
		-- Olin Miller.

Your lucky number is 3552664958674928.  Watch for it everywhere.

You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far.  Especially
if they are dead.

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10^12 to 1.
		-- Ernest Rutherford

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
		-- Henrick Ibson

YOW!!  Everybody out of the gene pool!"

© 1995 Peter Langston