Some favourite quotesAssembled herein a randomly ordered random selection of some of my favourite quotes: Virtue is more to be feared than vice, for it is not subject to the regulation of conscience. -- Adam Smith Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away. -- Anon. Truth is never pure and rarely simple. -- Oscar Wilde A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. -- Anon. A closed mouth gathers no foot. -- Anon. A computer, to print out a fact, -- Gigo A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. -- Anatol Holt A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. Anon. A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. -- Gloria Steinem When people talk about religious tolerance, it is always as a prelude to banning something. -- Miles Kington A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. -- Marshall Lumsden The purpose of power is power. -- George Orwell The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. --Fred Brooks When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen. -- Kai Lung To succeed, planning is not enough. One must improvise as well. -- Hari Seldon It pays to be obvious, especially when one has a reputation for being subtle.
-- Hari Seldon The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. -- George Mikes Furious activity is no substitute for progress. -- Anon. The sign of a decadent organization is an overweight manual of procedures. -- Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Good judgement comes from experience. -- Anon. Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. -- Fred Brooks I hear and I forget. -- Anon. Documentation is the castor oil of programming. The managers know it must be good, because programmers hate it so much. -- Weinberg The First Law of Maintenance:If it happens, it must be possible. -- Anon. Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week. --W.D. Howells No problem is simple until it's solved. Anon. One man's mean is another man's Poisson. -- Anon. The expert is a person who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. -- Anon. In the Tipperary Games this afternoon both teams in the final of the tug of war were disqualified for pushing. -- Anon. Users don't know what they want until they see what they get. -- Anon. You don't need to be well to be wealthy, -- Greg Lake You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. -- Olin Miller To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult to criticize the competent. -- Anon. Truth does not triumph. It simply remains when everything else has been squandered. -- Ludvik Vaculik Some people think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold. -- Anon. The systems designer suffers because the better his system does its job, the less its users know of its existence. -- Weinberg The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation: "... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws." -- Douglas Adams The moving cursor writes, and having writ, blinks on. -- Anon. A bore is a man who talks so much about himself that you can't talk about yourself. -- Anon. "The Hon. Member disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head." -- Pierre Trudeau Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. -- Anon. An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. -- Kahlil Gibran
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