Quotes

All of the quotes I fed into the random quote widget

Its a long list, scroll at your own risk

(As of 29/07/22, there are over a thousand quotes on here)

(07/01/22, 1.5k+)

(28/05/23, 2k+)

(17/01/24, 2.5k+)

Test What You Fly, Fly What You Test

Then bad things happen in rapid succession!

— Engineering

Just because a project succeeds in its goals doesn’t mean its not a fucking disaster

— Tom, Explosions And Fire

The computing scientist’s main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.

— Edsger Dijkstra

The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has ever attempted to contact us

It looks like it’s held together with duct tape, chewing gum, and good hopes

The solution to pollution is dilution.

— Satire

There is no problem that can’t be solved with a suitable application of explosives

— Mythbusters

Never attribute to malice, what you can attribute to stupidity

I plugged these two resistive heaters into this thin copper filament, and now I have three resistive heaters!

— Ohm’s Law

88.72% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Remember the past, fear the future

People who brag about their IQ are losers.

— Stephen Hawking

There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it twice

What goes up, must come down

— Gravity

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

— Carl Sagan

There is nothing as permanent as a temporary solution

Wherever you go, there you are

Code can be so complex that there are no obvious bugs or so simple that there are obviously no bugs

The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.

— Bill Nye

The human brain is the most complex structure in the whole entire universe

— The human brain

Perfection. Where everyone fails.

If you expect nothing you can be happy for everything.

A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a world with finite resources is either a madman or an economist.

In terms of sheer coolness, few things beat rocketry.

— Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder

The future’s already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

— William Gibson

Follow the process not the plan

“Perfect” is the enemy of “Good Enough”

Frustration is the crucible of invention

Floccinaucinihilipilification
the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.

— Dictionary

The secret to being tidy is making cleanliness easier than laziness.

Every plane lands eventually. The tricky part is being able to walk away afterwards.
Bonus points if the plane can be re-used.

We are in trouble as a species if people refuse to believe things they can’t do themselves.

— David Mitchell, QI

Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough or your heart stopping, because that’s not part of the test – that’s asbestos.

— Cave Johnson

You can set anything on fire if you really believe in yourself

Is there a patron saint of ballistics yet?

— Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Failure is always an option.

— Adam Savage, Mythbusters

When in doubt, C4.

— Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Research is what I’m doing when I have no idea what I’m doing.

— Richard Feynman

The Only Difference Between Screwing Around and Science Is Writing It Down

— Adam Savage, Alex Jason

Hopefully, the 27th time’s the charm

— Grant Imahara, Mythbusters

Over-Engineering is the mark of inferior design

— Jamie Hyneman, Mythbusters

Well there’s your problem.

Guns can kill. Knives can kill. Even children, launched at great speed, can kill.

Learning from mistakes is easy if you make a lot of them

Its very easy to get a rock to sit still

— Scott Manley

if you think its expensive to hire a professional to do a job- wait till you hire an amateur

Don’t show me the pen, show me what you wrote with it.

We are not professionals. We are determined idiots.

If its stupid and it works its not stupid

Duct tape fixes everything

If it blows up and you get data out of it, then it’s not a failure. Then it’s science.

— Copenhagen Suborbitals

Im not a terrorist, Im a scientist!

— William Osman

Never is a person more vulnerable, when they think they are safe

Sometimes, you can’t always get what you want. Where would you put it?

If you have to ask, you can’t afford it

— J.P. Morgan

The secret to going cheap is don’t be greedy

The difference between theory and practice is often greater in practice than theory

Bomb producer: an expert of explosives or a bad boiler designer

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you

Don’t let fire play with you

Keep it simple, stupid

Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that.

— George Carlin

There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.

— Douglass Adams

Krushnic Effect. A very dramatic phenomenon where your rocket makes a tremendous amount of noise and smoke but doesn’t go anywhere

The cool thing with programming is that it does exactly what you tell it to do, the problem with programming is that it does EXACTLY…what you tell it to do

Solving IT problems is like going down a 4×4 path with a Toyota Prius
You’ll get there but its going to be a bumpy ride

— A friend

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

— Alan Shepard

It’s a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

— Alan Shepard

Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

The Believer is happy, the Doubter is wise

— Edgar Allan Poe

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

— Henry David Thoreau

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

— Eugene McCarthy

A war doesnt determine who is right, only who is left.

Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap

— Albert Einstein

These people are making up random quotes I didn’t make

— Albert Einstein

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.

— Mark Twain, The Flat Earth Society

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

— Arthur C. Clarke

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

— Arthur C. Clarke

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

— Carl Sagan

Censorship is telling a man he cannot have a steak, just because babies cannot chew them.

— Mark Twain

[Science] works! Planes fly. Cars drive. Computers compute. If you base medicine on science, you cure people. If you base the design of planes on science, they fly. If you base the design of rockets on science, they reach the moon. It works… bitches.

— Richard Dawkins

It seems that the only thing that we aren’t running out of is problems

Science doesn’t care about your feelings

It’s hard to win an argument against someone who’s smart, it’s impossible to win an argument against someone who’s stupid.

Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

— Mark Twain

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

Don’t ever do something you can’t explain to paramedics

Always good to stop and think “How could this experiment have killed me?”. It trains your critical thinking and builds up your paranoia levels at the same time!

The minor detonation resulted in rapidly accelerated fractionated glassware

A place for everything and everything in its place

— People who can find stuff

‘Moving on with my life’ is the less harsh term I use to refer to giving up

— Tom

Test What You Fly, Fly What You Test

There are time limits in life that we can’t postpone and that’s exactly why we should give ourselves deadlines. It’s a good practice for the big one

— Captain Disillusion

When you can’t make a bomb out of something, it’s because you didn’t experiment enough

Any machine can be a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes

— Douglass Adams

Professionals are predictable, amateurs are the ones you have to watch out for

Newton’s third Law of Thermodynamics

— A Idiot

The risk I took was calculated but man am I bad at math

Time is a illusion, lunchtime doubly so

— Ford prefect, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

You only learn from mistakes, which is why I say I did really well on my exams

— Daniel Hardcastle, 2014

If you want an accurate one-liner saying, don`t get involved in hydrodynamic

Persnickety
Placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details; fussy.

— A Dictionary

The secret to being tidy is making cleanliness easier than laziness.

Well there’s your problem

— Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Tnetennba is a perfectly cromulent word.

This is why you should carry a rope with you at all times

— The National Rope Institute

If you think its expensive to hire a professional to do a job- wait till you hire an amateur

Every test gets me further to success

The difference between theory and practice is often greater in practice than theory

If you have to ask, you can’t afford it

— J.P. Morgan

I removed protracted terminology and replaced it with, easy words

There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened

— Douglass Adams

The cool thing with programming is that it does exactly what you tell it to do, the problem with programming is that it does EXACTLY…what you tell it to do

I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not even kidding

If its stupid and it works its not stupid

Duct tape fixes everything

It’s a mechanical problem, so as an electrical engineer I’m over qualified

— Mehdi Sadaghdar, ElectroBOOM

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

— Gerald Weinberg

Science isn’t about WHY. It’s about WHY NOT.

— Cave Johnson

Science isn’t about WHY. It’s about WHY NOT. Why is so much of our science dangerous? Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won’t hit you on the butt on the way out, because you are fired.

— Cave Johnson

Experience: That thing you acquire just after you needed it.

Wisdom. Triangulated experience acquired after everyone has stopped listening to you anyway.

The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.

— Thomas J. Watson, pioneer in the development computing equipment for IBM

The ideal engineer is a composite … He is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer; but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these disciplines in solving engineering problems.

— Nathan W. Dougherty, American civil engineer

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

— Douglass Adams

This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. ‘I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

— Arthur Dent

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

— Douglass Adams

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

— Douglass Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

— Douglass Adams

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer

— Douglass Adams

Don’t Panic.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

— Douglass Adams

A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’

— Douglass Adams

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

— Douglass Adams

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

— Douglass Adams

I’d far rather be happy than right any day.

— Douglass Adams

If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

— Zaphod beeblebrox, ex president of the universe

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

— Douglass Adams

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

— Douglass Adams

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

— Douglass Adams

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.

— Douglass Adams

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

— The dolphins

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

— Douglass Adams

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

— Douglass Adams

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

— Douglass Adams

There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.

— Douglass Adams

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

— Terry Pratchett

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

— Terry Pratchett

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

— Terry Pratchett

“And what would humans be without love?”
RARE, said Death.

— Terry Pratchett

There is a rumor going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

— Terry Pratchett

It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.

— Terry Pratchett

Science is like magic, but it works.

He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

— Terry Pratchett

Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

— Terry Pratchett

The optimist says: “The glass is half full.”
The pessimist says: “The glass is half empty.”
The engineer says: “The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

— Terry Pratchett

The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

— Terry Pratchett

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil… prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon…

— Terry Pratchett

Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility.

— Terry Pratchett

Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.

— Terry Pratchett

“There’s a door.”
“Where does it go?”
“It stays where it is, I think.”

— Terry Pratchett

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

— Terry Pratchett

Progress just means bad things happen faster.

— Terry Pratchett

Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.

— Terry Pratchett

Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.

— Terry Pratchett

She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn’t

— Terry Pratchett

Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.

— Albert Einstein

A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating because 300 people choke to death on food every year.

— Dixie Lee Ray

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

— Ronald Reagan

Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.

— Bill Gates

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possibly go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

— Terry Pratchett

Oh, meltdown. It’s one of these annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

— Mr Burns

Sleeping next to a woman presents a greater radioactive risk than camping beside a nuclear power station.

— Pile Botha

The definition of an Elephant, “A mouse built to government specifications.”

Every one of the 247 billion facts on the internet is wrong

Apparently, if you start a sentence with the word “apparently “, it is most likely untrue.

I used to dislike Stockholm Syndrome, but then it took a hold of me and I really grew to love it.

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
TANSTAAFL

— Robert Heinlein

Failure is unacceptable, yet we seem to be failing

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

There can be no progress without a goal

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability.

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

Cave Johnson, we’re done here.

— Cave Johnson

I do not think there is any thrill that can go trough the human hearth like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

— Nikola Tesla

If there is no reward for taking risk, then no one wants to take risk.

— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago,
The second best time is now

— Chinese proverb

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough

— Albert Einstein

Inevitably I was asked “Are you writing a book?”, and I would say that I was.
“What is the title?” was the inevitable next question and I would say: “Excuse Me, Sir, Would You Like To Buy A Kilo Of Isopropyl Bromide?”
“It’s a bit long”, was the inevitable comment, and this is true, but it’s the story of my life.

— Max G. Gergel, Excuse Me, Sir, Would You Like To Buy A Kilo Of Isopropyl Bromide?

“Define interesting”
“Oh god oh god we’re all going to die?”

Hardware is hard

Have you ever spent time creating something and then realized it’s the worst thing a human being has ever done

— Neil Cicierega, speaking about his song “Vengablood”

The ‘S’ in flat earth stands for scientific.

The giant smoke cloud means it’s working!

“Preacher, don’t the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?”
“Quite specific. It is however somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.”

Get baited scrub

— Sun Tzu

Contrary to popular belief, you can’t miss a shot you didn’t take

— Me

It’s held together with either skill or prayer

An overnight success rarely happens overnight

It takes 20 years to become a overnight success

They are right on the bleeding edge, and its bleeding for sure

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained

— Walt Disney

Maybe don’t shoot for the moon just yet, you might miss

— Me

Its not the fire that kills people, its the smoke
Therefore, this perfectly smokeless ethanol fire can not kill me

— Logical fallacy

I’ve lost enough IQ points to think IQ is real

— Harold Bomberguy

There’s a Socratic acceptance of the limits of one’s own knowledge, and there’s ignorance. I’m not saying which is which

I could definitely get it to the ground, landing would be a bit of an exaggeration

You fly the plane as low as physically possible and then stop flying

— Landing

Proof: left as an exercise to the reader

Fun fact! There are more planes in the sea than there are ships in the sky

The definition of an Elephant, “A mouse built to government specifications.”

“They’re playing Pass-the-Parcel”
“Can’t really blame them when it’s ticking.”

Kom dan, kutwurm

— Freek Vonk

You are standing on the shoulders of giants, and refuse to look down

— Me

Certainty comes from a lack of alternatives

— Me

There’s definitely a lot of words here, they have no substance, but there sure are a lot of them

Whats the difference between a good joke and

a bad joke timing

The level of engineering failure contained in such a small package is almost awe inspiring.

“How many gimmicks should we put in the pistol?”
“All of them, all the gimmicks.”

— The designers of the Taurus Curve

Reloading? That’s a problem for someone that doesn’t have enough guns on him.

Sanity must have prevailed; that or my perpetually empty billfold.

Do you think god stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he has created?

— Romero, Spy Kids 2

You tried your best and you failed miserably, the lesson is never try.

— Homer Simpson

Your weather is perplexing

— Ian McCollum, Arriving in finland

We must end War, before War ends us.

— H. G. Wells

Humans had always been better at killing than any other living thing.

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, the creator of Metro 2033

A troop transport that can’t carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that’s too conspicuous to do reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snowblower, but has enough ammo to take out half of D.C.

— U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Burton on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle

Ludwig Boltzman, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand.
Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933.
Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously

— D.L Goodstein, States of Matter

Gentlemen! you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!

— President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove

I don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up.

— Gen. Buck Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit

— WC Fields

That’s Numberwang!

Numberwang!

Numberwang

The analysis is severely limited by my lack of understanding of what I am doing

Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance-

— John Sedgwick, Right before being shot by a confederate sniper

Anything that can be digitized will be digitized; anything that is digitized will be searchable on the Internet.

— Dick Ahles

Now that’s numberwang!

Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discorvery

— Robert Zubrin

Ideas have consequences

— Robert Zubrin

Now, one obvious and frequently noted flaw in this plan is that fusion reactors do not exist

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

Of course, if you don’t go about it correctly, you might also vaporize the spaceship, blow it to pieces, turn the crew to jelly with 100,000g of acceleration, or kill everyone on board with a lethal dose of gamma rays.
As we say in the engineering business, “These concerns need to be addressed.”

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

The obvious answer is anti-matter

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

In this chapter we have discussed interstellar travel using mighty systems such as thermonuclear fusion, antimatter rockets, and laser-pushed light-sails, all with power ratings in the tens to hundreds of terawatts.
It should be obvious to most readers that such systems will be (a) expensive and (b) very dangerous in the hands of minors

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

People will do anything to survive, even become better.

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

Life is the creator of nature

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

Its mass would be about equal to that of Venus, which might be conveniently disassembled to construct it.

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

The day may come when humanity no longer has a need for wars.
But we will always have a need for heroes.

— Robert Zubrin, Entering Space

See, this is why I’m such a good theoretical physicist. I solve problems that shouldn’t even exist to begin with.

— Gordon Freeman, Freeman’s mind

Your side is the one with death and violence, mine is the one with hope, love, and submachine guns!

— Gordon Freeman, Freeman’s mind

At least this shotgun won’t deceive me. It’s filled with pellets, not LIES!

— Gordon Freeman, Freeman’s mind

Space, it says, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.

— Douglass Adams, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

He’s spending a year dead for tax reasons.

— Douglass Adams, Restaurant at the end of the universe

If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn’t the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.

— Douglass Adams

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

— Douglass Adams, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

I don’t want to die now! I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!

— Arthur Dent, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Things aren’t scary. People are scared.

— Chris Hadfield

When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.

— Alan Shepard

Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world, knowing they’re going to light the bottom, and doesn’t get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation.

— John Young

Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked and even blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on.

— Buzz Aldrin

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

— Allan Shepard

In the field of technology, simplification is always an enormous advance

— Pierre Boulle

Astronauts are inherently insane. And really noble.

— Andy Weir

Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.

— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter

— Albert Einstein

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

— Albert Einstein

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

— Carl Sagan

For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter. And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained – and that’s our present universe.

— Albert Einstein

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

— Stephen Hawking

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

— Albert Einstein

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

— Carl Sagan

I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.

— Arthur C. Clarke

I see Earth! It is so beautiful.

— Yuri Gagarin

I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.

— Yuri Gagarin

Curiosity is the essence of our existence.

— Gene Cernan

Gravity hurts.

— Viktor Alexandrov

In the van, we can see the rocket in the distance, lit up and shining, an obelisk. In reality, of course, it’s a 4.5-megaton bomb loaded with explosive fuel, which is why everyone else is driving away from it.

— Chris Hadfield

If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much

God made the earth, but the Dutch made the Netherlands

Holland, the largest man made structure on earth

I read a book on Anti-Gravity, couldn’t put it down

I took the only thing that communism ever built that worked. And using it to make money like a dirty capitalist.

— Brandon Herrera, The Ak Guy

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

— Dr. Coomer

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can’t get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.

— Martin Amis, Einstein’s Monsters

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

They’ve got us surrounded, the poor bastards!

— Chreighton Abrams

I surrender and volunteer for treason.

— Zapp Brannigan

The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.

— Karl Donitz, Nazi German Admiral during WW2

“Sir they have us surrounded!”
“That simplifies the problem”

You may have a major in physics, but I have a minor in research

Underidoderidoderiododeridoo

— Winston Churchill

The living will envy the dead.

— Nikita Khrushchev

If you can remember the 60s you weren’t really there

— Jonathan Frakes

Only when we stop stopping our lives can we begin to start starting them

— Professor Whitman

The only two certainties in life are death and taxes.

— Benjamin Franklin

Welcome to the world of high voltage, where everything is a wire and you’re probably going to die

— William Osman

It’s not perfect, but it’s fantastic

— Adam Savage

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under it’s deck? I have no time for such nonsense.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

We fire the WHOLE bullet. That’s 65% more bullet per bullet!

— Cave Johnson

It happens to happen

— Me

It happened to happen

— Me

There are more planes in the ocean than submarines in the sky

Hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

— Aviation maxim

More Speed, Less Haste.

There is no amount of expertise that will allow you to avoid failing.

— Adam Savage

The problem with doing it right the first time is that no one appreciates how difficult it was.

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.

— Niels Bohr

The difference between being smart and being wise:
Being smart is learning from your mistakes.
Being wise is learning from the mistakes of others.
My life has given many others the chance to be wise.

Science is suffering.

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all

I don’t really have a solution for that, I’m just complaining in a gentle fashion

— Adam Savage

People aren’t loyal to you, they are loyal to their need of you. Once their need changes, so does their loyalty

— Kermit The Frog

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

— Leonardo de Vinci

Safety may get old but so do those who practice it.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

— Albert Einstein

The purpose of intellect is the transformation of a miracle to something understandable.

— Albert Einstein

You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you have to watch out for.

— Captain Jack Sparrow, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.

— David Attenborough

Too Big to Fail, that’s like saying too fat to diet

— Robin Williams

If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

— Confucius

Who’s the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?

— Obi-Wan Kenobi

Why is the floor on the floor

— Ethanol

If you don’t get hired for an unpaid internship it literally makes no difference. Just show up and start working. What are they gonna do, pay you?

Oh, actually we’re getting tons of funding, but the people who decide how it’s spent spend it hiring more people to figure out how it’s spent.

Its not really a rabbit hole its just a normal sized hole that I fell into and then climbed back out of and thought ‘huh that’s weird.’

— jan Misali

42

I use the universally applicable measuring system of “that looks about right.”

Nobody expect the Spanish inquisition!

— The Spanish inquisition

We have purposely trained him wrong, as a joke.

— Great Britain on America’s use of the imperial system

Its very important this lines up perfectly.
I’m eyeballing it with a straight edge, but I’m eyeballing it carefully.

Why doesn’t anybody ever quote me? What’s up with Sun Tzu?

— King Arthur

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

If it’s broke, don’t fix it
If it ain’t broke, fix it till it breaks then run away

— Mark Rendle

Nice day to be young and made of skin, don’t you think?

— Eric Feurer

Don’t get me wrong

— Linus Torvalds

Conflict is the beginning of consciousness

— M. Esther Harding

Whatever it is, I’m against it

— Groucho Marx

I am not young enough to know everything.

— Oscar Wilde

The most common reaction to learning about the Dunning-Kruger effect is a knee-jerk presumption of individual immunity from it.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

— Richard Feynman

The Lathe is the King of Tools

The first draft of anything is shit.

— Ernest Hemingway

Guns are awesome!
Idiots are not.

— Brandon Herrera, The Ak Guy

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

— Thomas A. Edison

The only thing separating a nut from a genius is proper equipment.

That’s probably fine

Even the best product can be ruined by upper management

Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.

— Steve Wozniak

I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.

— Samuel Beckett

The only source of knowledge is experience.

— Albert Einstein

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.

— Louis Pasteur

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

— Albert Einstein

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

— Jim Rohn

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

— Albert Einstein

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

— Isaac Newton

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

— Andy McIntyre

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

— Lloyd Alexander

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

— Plato

Zing, the sound wineglasses make

— Me

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

— Kernighan’s law

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who’s been pinching my beer?

And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye.

— Terry Pratchett

“Patterson, fire a warning shot!”
“Sir, this is an m284 grenade launcher”
“Ah potato potato fire it Patterson”

The best work is teamwork!

There is no better work than a network

The trouble with computers, of course, is that they’re very sophisticated idiots.

— Doctor Who (Tom Baker)

“Fire a warning shot Patterson”
“Sir, this is an MK19 belt fed automatic grenade launcher”
“Ah potato potato, just fire it Patterson”

I’m misusing algebra to throw a fit.

God help us. We’re in the hands of engineers… and ferrets?

— Boeing Pilot

God help us, were in the hands of engineers!

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
That way, when you criticize him, you will be a mile away and have his shoes.

— Sun Tzu

I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.

— Richard Feynman

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

— Richard Feynman

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

— Richard Feynman

Spend more than twenty four hours awake, and your decision making skills go to pieces

— The Prepper

The answer to the age old question: It depends.

“Dad, what is technology?”
“It’s magic Joel, it’s magic.”

Science is like magic, but it works

Trying is the first step toward failure.

— Homer Simpson

Homeboy was about 30 degrees from making a serious fucky-wucky and having to get in The Forever Box

— Brandon Herrera

I took ballistics in school! Fascinating subject! Things go up, things go down!

The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague

— Edsger Dijkstra

Saying that guns kill people is like saying spoons make people fat

The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

— Albert Einstein

The crusade against fireworks is strange in a country where 40,000 die annually in car crashes and over a million are seriously injured.
It’s probably the usual envy of people having too much fun.

— J. B. Calvert

Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

— Albert Einstein

Unlike you people, I have no illusion as to my usefulness in an actual apocalypse. The most I can hope for is to die in a pose that confuses future archeologists.

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

Nothing says ‘I come in peace’ like a good incendiary device

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

I woke up one morning to find that the entire city had been covered in a three-foot layer of man-eating jam.

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

I could think of no better place to secretly murder someone than inside a fridge. Well, actually there were probably several better ones, but none came to mind at the time.

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

This was how I would die. Strangled by an attractive, seminaked woman inside a fridge with a giant tarantula in the middle of a sea of carnivorous jam. As I blacked out, all I could think of was a fortune teller I’d spoken to a few years ago, and how full of shit she’d turned out to be.

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

It could have been a thief or a murderer. I considered crying out. A thief would run away, but a murderer would murder me. On the other hand, the murderer would probably murder me if I didn’t too. That was his whole thing.

— Yahtzee Croshaw, Jam

Once the rockets are up who cares where they come down, that’s not my department says Werner Von Braun.

— Political satire, but also a good rhyme

Recalcitrant!

A university’s engineering faculty is invited by an airplane manufacturer to be passengers on the test flight of their latest, fastest experimental aircraft.
The professors are all excited as they board the plane and get ready for the trip.
Once on board the company’s representative says, “Great to see you all here. We invited you all to commemorate your great work, you should know that this airplane was fully designed, engineered, and made by your successful students!”
There is a mad scramble for the doors as the professors panic to be let off the plane. The representative notices one professor sitting calmly. “Why are you not panicking like the others?”
“Because,” the professor answers, “I taught and knew those kids for four years of schooling. I am confident that I know their abilities. I have complete faith that this shit will not even start.”

The best work is teamwork

The best work is a network

They can’t defeat you if you don’t know what you’re doing

— Sun Tzu

Simplicity is the purest form of sophistication

— Leonardo de Vinci

A computer is like air conditioning – it becomes useless when you open Windows.

— Linus Torvalds

They asked me if I had a degree in theoretical physics, I said I had a theoretical degree in physics, they said welcome aboard.

Don’t tell people your plans. Show them your results.

Chekhov’s concealed pistol!

1 in 3 numbers can be divided by 3

— Lloyd

“Rocket scientists just don’t like to die” is a bold statement, most just tread the line of “maybe we die, maybe we make something cool, only one way to find out”

There is nothing impossible to him who will try

— Alexander the Great

In terms of sheer coolness, few things beat rocketry.

— Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder

Remember: Progress before safety!

If only international politics was as easy as rocket science

— Scott Manley

War is sweet to those who have no experience of it. But the experienced man trembles exceedingly in his heart at its approach.

— Pindar

Rest in peace AN-225 “Mirya”

— 1985 – 2022

Older men declare war but it is the youth that must fight and die

— Herbert Hoover

A coward dies many times before his death but a valiant only dies once.

— Julius Caesar

Sometimes things need to look horribly horribly wrong before you get them right

— Kevin Temmer

Don’t just miss your shots, miss them with purpose

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

— General Douglas MacArthur

The pen is mightier than the sword… unless of course you happen to be in a sword fight.

— Nero, Shadows Of Evil

The 75mm main gun is firing, the 37mm secondary gun is firing, but it’s traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying, ‘Driver advance’ on the A set, but the driver – who can’t hear me – is reversing.
And as I look over the top of the turret, and see 12 enemy tanks, just 50 yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich.

— Lt. Ken Giles, recounting a tank battle in North Africa

“they want to surrender?”
“No they want us to surrender.”
“Nuts.”

If it ain’t broke, we’ll fix it ’til it is.

If it wasn’t for the bloody Yanks, we could have kept this war going for another 10-20 years.

— Mad Jack Churchill

They’ve got us surrounded, the poor bastards!

— Chreighton Abrams

Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.

— Union General John Sedgwick, shortly before being killed by a sniper.

“Private, I haven’t seen you during yesterdays stealth training!”
“Thank you, sir!”

You are supposed to think outside the box, not step over boundaries

He who starts to play shall also endure it.

— Finnish proverb

There is no such thing as an unsolvable problem

— Sergei Korolev

We are ignoring the passing of time.

— Tom

A star walks into a black hole but doesn’t seen phased.
The black hole then turns to the star and says, “I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation.”

We don’t like him necessarily because he’s a likable character, we find him endearing because he’s right.

Legacy code is the code that is too scary to update and too profitable to delete

— Dylan Beattie

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

— Rudyard Kipling

For the junior developers, a book is a sequential document database implemented in hardware.
They don’t have WiFi but the battery life on them is phenomenal.

— Dylan Beattie, Paraphrased

If you ever code something that “feels like a hack but it works,” just remember that a CPU is literally a rock that we tricked into thinking

— @daisyowl, Don’t forget we first flattened the rock and filled it with lightning

The 11 in C++11 refers to the number of legs that have now been nailed onto the dog whilst attempting to build a better octopus.

— Dylan Beattie

All art is quite useless.

— Oscar Wilde

The function of art is to hold a mirror up to nature.

— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Clouds are not spheres,
mountains are not cones,
coastlines are not circles,
and bark is not smooth,
nor does lightning travel in a straight line.

— Benoit Mandelbrot

We invented computers, which means taking lightning and sticking it into a rock until it learns to think.

— Dylan Beattie

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

— Everett M. Smith

A rapid expansion in volume associated with an extremely vigorous outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases.

— An explosion

Contact light

— The first words on the moon

It was only a little bit impossible, which is not the same as completely impossible

— Sid Meier, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games

It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.

— Alan Cooper

If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking.

— General George Patton

I once told my flight instructor after a preflight inspection… “That plane is leaking oil”
He said, “good… if it’s not leaking oil, its out of oil.”

— Anecdote

Its not a oil leak, its a progressive oil change.

Slow release evaporative humidifiers, otherwise known as buckets of water

— Robert Dunn

How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth,” when it is clearly “Ocean.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Science demands patience.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

— Arthur C. Clarke

I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

— Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God.

All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.

— Ronald Reagan

In reality, Chernobyl proves why nuclear is the safest way to make electricity. In the worst nuclear power accidents, relatively small amounts of particulate matter escape, harming only a handful of people.

— Michael Shellenberger

Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

— George Burns

All things are difficult before they are easy.

— Thomas Fuller

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

— Theodore Roosevelt

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

— Jonas Salk

Quality is everyone’s responsibility.

— W. Edwards Deming

Nothing will work unless you do.

— Maya Angelou

“Relatively safe” is etched on many tombstones.

When you want to insert a nail into a piece of wood, don’t do anything fancy or glamorous. Just take the damn hammer and hit the son of a bitch until it’s in.

Someone already did the due diligence for me, I assume

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations

— George Orwell

Being a rocket scientist isn’t all that smart when you could work in finance.

— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha

When you launch in a rocket, you’re not really flying that rocket.
You’re just sort of hanging on.

— Michael P. Anderson

Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing.

— Sally Ride

Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don’t have the balls to live in the real world.

— Mary F. Shafer, SR-71 Flying Qualities Lead Engineer, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center

Do you realize what we accomplished today? Today the spaceship was born.

— Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger, Spoken to Wernher von Braun, after the first successful flight of the A-4 rocket to the edge of space, 3 October 1942.

Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty.

— John Carmack

It all looked so easy when you did it on paper —
where valves never froze, gyros never drifted,
and rocket motors did not blow up in your face.

— Milton W. Rosen, Rocket engineer, 1956

There’s the whole myth about rocket science.
It’s really not that hard. It’s not brain surgery.

— John Powell, Founder of JP Aerospace

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind – every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.

— John Glenn

The space station is the most unique laboratory we’ve ever built. The reason we have it is to research materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals – the possibilities are nearly endless.

— John Glenn

Quite often, while I’m getting up in the morning, I think my warranty is running out on these body parts because it’s not working quite the way it used to.

— John Glenn

In orbit, you’re keyed up and aware of everything going on, every little noise, anything that may have special meaning because of where you are.

— John Glenn

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

— Neil Armstrong

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

— Neil Armstrong

That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

— Neil Armstrong, As it was actually said

You’ve got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected.

— Neil Armstrong

Shoot for the stars, but if you happen to miss, shoot for the moon again.

— Neil Armstrong

Pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.

— Neil Armstrong

I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.

— Neil Armstrong

In much of society, research means to investigate something that you do not know or understand.

— Neil Armstrong

Well, I think that we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

— Neil Armstrong

The regret on our side is, they used to say years ago, we are reading about you in science class. Now they say, we are reading about you in history class.

— Neil Armstrong

I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.

— Neil Armstrong

The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

— Neil Armstrong

We would like to give special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft, who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their hearts and all their abilities into those crafts. To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11.

— Neil Armstrong

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!

— Yuri Gagarin

Looking at the Earth from afar, you realize that it is too small for conflict and just large enough for cooperation. Nothing will stop us.

— Yuri Gagarin

The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we are not afraid…

— Yuri Gagarin

When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don’t be afraid. I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space, and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!

— Yuri Gagarin, Talking about the farmers investigating the man who just fell out of the sky onto their field

Our technique is very reliable, and I, as well as my comrades, scientists, engineers, and technicians, did not doubt for a minute its successful completion.

— Yuri Gagarin

I am watching the Earth. The visibility is good. I feel well and cheerful. The machine is functioning normally.

— Yuri Gagarin

Gravity hurts.

— Viktor Alexandrov

We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act.

— Ron Garan

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.

— Larry Niven

In this single galaxy of ours, there are eighty-seven thousand million suns.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Pythagoras, the inventor of the triangle

I am still alive!

— Caligula, Roman emperor, after being fatally stabbed

When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.

— Werner Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist

This dying is boring.

— Richard Feynman, Last Words

I choose to live forever, or die trying to.

Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun.

Stone’s Law: One man’s “simple” is another man’s “huh?”

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

— Bill Gates, 1981

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

— Western Union internal memo, 1876.

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

— Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science in 1949.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

— Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

But what … is it good for?

— Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968.

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

— H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction

— Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.

The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon

— Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

— Ayn Rand

To be, or what?

— Sylvester Stallone

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should of been more specific

— Jane Wagner

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up

— Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad”

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

— Robert Frost

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense

— Chapman Cohen

Reflection is for mirrors

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a great analogy when applied to everything *except books*

You are entitled to my opinion

Tetris: A Inventory Management Survival Horror Game.

“What do you see?”
“Everything! That is my curse”

— Sherlock holmes

My hatred of mineralogists is purely theatrical

Everything is a low hanging fruit if you’re tall enough

Engineering is just simplified physics

— Junferno

Physics is just simplified engineering

— Junferno

Using Arduino, hardware engineers can pretend like they know how software works, and software engineers can pretend like they know how anything works

— Junferno

You named your killer robot ‘Gus’?

— Joan

Old isn’t always gold. Sometimes new is what’s to do.

“They called Issac Newton crazy when he discovered apples”

“The Nerds in high school are the ones who become cool as adults”

— Sun Tzu

Safety rules are written in blood, as in, people die to change or update safety regulations

Complexity is beautiful.

If you set your goals low, you can hit a lot of ’em.

— Bill Burr

There are virtually infinite possible ways to shuffle a deck of cards, yet solitaire still becomes a bit samey after a few games

When you find solutions for math it called “pure math”
When math find solutions for you it called “applied math”

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

I didn’t ‘slip’, there was just a minor shoelace malfunction…

The best way to communicate from one human being to another is through story.

— Donald Knuth

At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. But as I get older, life is totally about losing everything

— Scrooge McDuck

Make something foolproof, and nature will make a better fool.

We have some questions about your internet purchases

— The local police force, (Unironically, a great thanks to our (national) police force for their service

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“It’s quite exciting,” said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

So many books, so little time.

— Frank Zappa

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.

— Bernard M. Baruch

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

— Dr. Seuss

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

— Mae West

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

— Robert Frost

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.

— Elbert Hubbard

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

— Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

— Oscar Wilde

Without music, life would be a mistake.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

— Oscar Wilde

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

— Andre Gide

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

— Sylvia Plath

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

— C.S. Lewis

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

— Albert Einstein

There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.

— Linda Grayson

Science is epic. Death is certain.

Not every madman is a genius, but every genius has a level of madness.

Love with your hearth, use your head for everything else!

— Captain Disillusion

Paranoia is a byproduct of being consistently right, you should aspire to it.

The life of a designer is no parade of victories.
There are innumerably more failures.
But they must not stop us.

Life is a series of small inconveniences, followed by the biggest one of them all

Technically correct is the best kind of correct

Music is the only art that goes through the ears and straight into the heart

— Rick Astley

You can do whatever you want, the consequences are what fucks you over.

— Hugh Janus

The most dangerous person is always calm

It doesn’t work as expected because you’re expecting too much.

bomb-makers don’t build tests of electrical engineering skill, they build devices that go bang.

— Sherlock holmes, Elementary

bomb-makers don’t build tests of electrical engineering skill, they build devices that go bang.
The simpler the device, the more likely it is to explode.

— Sherlock holmes, Elementary

No plan survives contact with the enemy

— Helmuth Moltke

Never has so much been owed to so few

— Winston Churchill

This is the nearest thing to doomsday that one could possibly imagine. I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the Earth’s existence — the last human will see what we saw.

— George Kistiakowsky, after watching the Trinity Test

The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before…Words are inadequate tools for the job of acquainting those not present with the physical, mental and psychological effects. It had to be witnessed to be realized.

— Major General Thomas Farrell, describing the Trinity Test in a report to the Secretary of War

They are all out to get you

— Paranoia

As engineers, we were going to be in a position to change the world – not just study it.

— Henry Petroski, American engineer and author specializing in failure analysis

The scientist discovers a new type of material or energy and the engineer discovers a new use for it.

— Gordon Lindsay Glegg, British engineer and author

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

— Isaac Asimov, American writer, professor of biochemistry

The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.

— James Kip Finch, American engineer and educator

Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been.

— Theodore von Karman, Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist

Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.

— Sir Henry Royce, English engineer and car designer

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

— Lee Iacocca, American engineer and automobile executive

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they’re coming apart.

— William Gibson, Zero History

When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.

Ford replied,”Produce it anyway.”

Airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

— Scott Adams

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.

— Robert Heinlein

Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.

— Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.

— Richard Lamm

We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft, their designers, builders, navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“The fewer moving parts, the better.”
“Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”

— Christian Cantrell, Containment

Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It’s coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.

— James Dyson

Automation is cost cutting by tightening the corners and not cutting them.

— Haresh Sippy

It is hardly surprising that the malodorous field of garbology has not attained the popularity of rocket science, oil exploration, or brain surgery.

— Hans Y. Tammemagi, The Waste Crisis

As in real life, complex engineering designs demand a pragmatic approach.

— Haresh Sippy

In engineering, the joints are the most crucial. They have to be both firm and flexible, exactly like the joints in our body.

— Haresh Sippy

Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed.

— David P. Billington

Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice.

— Ove Arup

Engineers … are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch them is imperative. Thus it is the essence of modern engineering not only to be able to check one’s own work but also to have one’s work checked and to be able to check the work of others.

— Henry Petroski, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

The history of engineering is really the history of breakages, and of learning from those breakages. I was taught at college ‘the engineer learns most on the scrapheap’

— C. A. Claremont

Engineers have more words for screwing up than the Inuit have words for snow.

— Pierce Nichols

Incompetence is prevalent in the engineering field.

— Steven Magee, Magee’s Disease

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

— Bill Gates

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

— Lewis Thomas

At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a noble profession.

— Queen Elizabeth II

There’s nothing I believe in more strongly than getting young people interested in science and engineering, for a better tomorrow, for all humankind.

— Bill Nye

The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it.

— Bill Nye

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

— Vincent Van Gogh

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

— Lewis Carroll

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

— Walt Disney

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

— Mark Twain

Science is about knowing; engineering is about doing.

— Henry Petroski

If you want to work in engineering and to have an impact that’s global, come work in the aerospace sector.

— Dennis Muilenburg

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.

— H. G. Wells

If we don’t end war, war will end us.

— H. G. Wells

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

— Herbert Hoover

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

— George S. Patton

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

— Bertrand Russell

Advertising is legalized lying.

— H. G. Wells

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

— H. G. Wells

What really matters is what you do with what you have.

— H. G. Wells

Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you’ll have an engineer for life.

— Bruce Dickinson

Life is too short to do the things you don’t love doing.

— Bruce Dickinson

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

— Marie Curie

Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that’s certain in this life is that I’ll never be a fashion icon.

— Bruce Dickinson

Well, yeah, sometimes I get a little too creative.

— Bruce Dickinson

If your only arbiter of anything is money, really you should… go and rob banks.

— Bruce Dickinson

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

— Mark Twain

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

— Oscar Wilde

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

— Milton Friedman

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

— Albert Einstein

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

— Bob Hope

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.

— W. C. Fields

Do what you love and the money will follow.

— Marsha Sinetar

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

— Ayn Rand

My dad always told me, ‘I don’t care what you do. Just aim to be the best at it. Even if it’s the world’s best window cleaner.’

— Bruce Dickinson

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

— Peter Drucker

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

— Abraham Lincoln

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.

— George Halas

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.

— Walt Whitman

Engineering or technology is all about using the power of science to make life better for people, to reduce cost, to improve comfort, to improve productivity, etc.

— N. R. Narayana Murthy

I look most like myself… when I’m wearing my black, nerdy engineering glasses.

— Junot Diaz

Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.

— Junot Diaz

You can be creative in anything – in math, science, engineering, philosophy – as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

— Ken Robinson

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random.

— Ken Robinson

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

— Charles R. Swindoll

The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

— Ken Robinson

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

— Nelson Mandela

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

— Mark Twain

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

— Albert Einstein

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

— Aristotle

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

— William Butler Yeats

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

— Anthony J. D’Angelo

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

— Maimonides

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

— Chanakya

Now the problem with standardized tests is that it’s based on the mistake that we can simply scale up the education of children like you would scale up making carburetors. And we can’t, because human beings are very different from motorcars, and they have feelings about what they do and motivations in doing it, or not.

— Ken Robinson

Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests.

— Ken Robinson

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

— Benjamin Franklin

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

— Mahatma Gandhi

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein

Research is creating new knowledge.

— Neil Armstrong

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

— Thomas Huxley

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

— Bruce Lee

Learning never exhausts the mind.

— Leonardo da Vinci

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

— Winston Churchill

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

— William S. Burroughs

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

— Bill Gates

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

— Leonardo da Vinci

Our life is made by the death of others.

— Leonardo da Vinci

Don’t go through life, grow through life.

— Eric Butterworth

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

— Terry Pratchett

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

— Terry Pratchett

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

— Terry Pratchett

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

— Confucius

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

— Plato

Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.

— Abu Bakr

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

— Terry Pratchett

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

— Groucho Marx

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

— Albert Einstein

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

— Mark Twain

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

— Thomas Sowell

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

— Margaret Mead

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

— Elbert Hubbard

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

— Jules Renard

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

— Steve Martin

The problem with common sense is that its not all that common

— Voltaire

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

— Isaac Asimov

The harder I work, the luckier I become.

— Terry Pratchett

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

— Vincent Van Gogh

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

— Jonas Salk

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

— Robert Frost

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

— Plato

‘Educational’ refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

— Terry Pratchett

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

— Terry Pratchett

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

— Terry Pratchett

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

— Nelson Mandela

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

— Jimmy Dean

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

— Harry S Truman

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

— Terry Pratchett

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.

— Benjamin Franklin

Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.

— St. Jerome

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

— Terry Pratchett

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

— Terry Pratchett

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

— Winston Churchill

Enjoy life… that’s what we’re here for.

— David Faustino

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

— Confucius

I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.

— Terry Pratchett

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God’s waiting room.

— Terry Pratchett

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

— Terry Pratchett

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

— Terry Pratchett

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

— Terry Pratchett

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

— Terry Pratchett

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

— Terry Pratchett

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.

— Terry Pratchett

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

— Terry Pratchett

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

— Buddha

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

— Arthur Conan Doyle

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

— William Shakespeare

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

— Terry Pratchett

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

— Winston Churchill

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

— Samuel Beckett

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

— Terry Pratchett

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

— Terry Pratchett

I’m glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

— Terry Pratchett

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

— Lao Tzu

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

— Terry Pratchett

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

— Terry Pratchett

I am a great fan of science, but I cannot do a quadratic equation.

— Terry Pratchett

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

— Carl Sagan

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

— Jeff Bezos

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.

— Elon Musk

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.

— Wernher von Braun

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

— Immanuel Kant

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

— Edward Teller

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

— Isaac Asimov

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

— Marcus Aurelius

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

— Terry Pratchett

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

— Confucius

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

— Albert Einstein

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: ‘Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?’

— Terry Pratchett

I have a living will and I have friends, and I have money and I have hope.

— Terry Pratchett

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

— Terry Pratchett

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

— Terry Pratchett

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

— Lao Tzu

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

— Henry David Thoreau

In the 1950s, the average person saw science as something that solved problems. With the advent of nuclear weapons and pollution, the idealistic aura around scientific research has been replaced by cynicism.

— Sheldon Lee Glashow

I wore a coat and tie all through high school: my way of being rebellious in the late 1950s.

— Vint Cerf

Back in the 1950s, there was a top-secret program code-named SUNTAN being conducted at a top-secret facility called Skunk Works. Its objective? To develop a liquid-hydrogen-powered spy plane. Because liquid hydrogen is incredibly volatile, early experiments were conducted inside a bomb shelter with eight-foot-thick walls.

— Annie Jacobsen

You can absolutely drive through an atmospheric bomb test and not be affected.

— Annie Jacobsen

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

— Helen Keller

Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.

— John Ray

The Internet is literally a network of networks.

— Vint Cerf

Sleep is a waste of time.

— Vint Cerf

You don’t have to know how to build an automobile or a television set or a laptop to know how to use it.

— Vint Cerf

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

— Aristotle

Sometimes thinking too much can destroy your momentum.

— Tom Watson

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

— Cesare Pavese

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

— Socrates

You don’t have to be young to learn about technology. You have to feel young.

— Vint Cerf

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

— Elbert Hubbard

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

— Alan Kay

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

— Aldous Huxley

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

— Andrew Brown

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

— Mitch Kapor

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

— B. F. Skinner

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

— Unknown

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

— Unknown

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

— Unknown

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

— Unknown

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

— Unknown

Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.

— Unknown

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

— Unknown

If you’re not first, you’re last.

— Unknown

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.

— Unknown

If you done it, it ain’t bragging.

— Unknown

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

— Confucius

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

— Albert Einstein

Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem.

— Virginia Satir

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

— Colin Powell

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.

— Omar N. Bradley

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

The computer would do anything you programmed it to do.

— Vint Cerf

In 1973, the only cryptographic technology we could get our hands on was classified.

— Vint Cerf

At some point, you can’t lift this boulder with just your own strength. And if you find that you need to move bigger and bigger boulders up hills, you will need more and more help.

— Vint Cerf

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

— Napoleon Hill

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

There was something amazingly enticing about programming.

— Vint Cerf

What is special about VOIP is that it’s just another thing you can do on the Internet, whereas it is the only thing – or nearly the only thing with the exception of the dial-up modem and fax – that you can do on the public switched telephone network.

— Vint Cerf

We live in a very complex world.

— Vint Cerf

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

— Norman Vincent Peale

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

— Albert Einstein

Nothing can be done except little by little.

— Charles Baudelaire

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

— Vincent Van Gogh

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

— Vincent Van Gogh

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

— Marc Anthony

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

— Bertrand Russell

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Lost time is never found again.

— Benjamin Franklin

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

— Abraham Lincoln

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

— Bil Keane

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

— Henry David Thoreau

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

— Albert Einstein

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

— Evelyn Waugh

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

— Thomas Hardy

Time and tide wait for no man.

— Geoffrey Chaucer

If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

— John Wooden

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

— Carl Sandburg

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

42

Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

— Ernest Hemingway

Lot of people are bit by dogs that don’t bite and get shot by guns that aren’t loaded.

Hardware is hard
Software is also hard

You never rise to the occasion: you sink to your level of training.

I’m a wilderness survival expert. I expertly avoid ever needing to survive in the wilderness.

As a former US Marine with a lot of guns people usually think I’m an expert. All I know is I point loud hole at what I want to hit, pull bendy thing slowly and wait for the science magic to do things and it makes me smile.

— Eli Cash

The truth about a city’s aspirations isn’t found in its vision
It’s found in its budget.

— Brent Toderian

It’s just like a mule. A mule is a docile, patient beast, and he will give you power to pull a plow for decades, but he wants to kill you. He waits for years and years for that rare, opportune moment when he can turn your lights out with a simple kick to the head.

— Jerry Poole, referring to a nuclear power reactor

A scientist need not be responsible for the entire world. Social irresponsibility might be a reasonable stance.

— Advice given to young physicist Richard Feynman by mathematician Johnny von Neumann

Everything went quite well as long as a mechanic from Augsburg and an engineering school professor were permanently on hand.

— A note from an early diesel engine owner to Rudolph Diesel, 1898

Will you please issue the following operating instructions to the operator engaged in controlling the Wigner Energy Release. If the highest Uranium or Graphite temperature reaches 300°C, then Mr Fair, Mr Gausden and Mr Robertson are to be informed at once, and the PCE alerted, to be ready to insert plugs and close the chimney base.

— D R R Fair, Manager, Pile

If the oceans were filled with liquid sodium, then some crazy scientist would want to build a water-cooled reactor.

— Hyman Rickover, grousing about the sodium-cooled USS Seawolf

Expect to have a fire.

— The concluding sentence in AEC Accident and Fire Prevention issue no. 21, 28 October 1955, “Plutonium Fires”

Expect to have a fire.

The most important man in a nuclear submarine? That would be the inconspicuous seaman who goes all around the sub and drips oil in the bearings. You lose one bearing in something like a valve-actuating motor somewhere, and you can lose the whole boat.

— Paul “Spider Fuzz” Field, Former submariner and Research Technician at Georgia Tech

HEAT SINK: a small metallic device attached to your CPU that, like the cooling tower at a nuclear-power plant, is the only device standing between safe, reliable system operation and a total core meltdown.

— Howard Johnson, Ph.D., in Manager’s Guide to Digital Design

If a man fires at the past from a pistol, the future will fire at him from a cannon.

— Abutalib

There we are, learn to live with it

— A mustachioed British man drawing a straight line on a map

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

What’s as big as a house, burns 20 litres of fuel every hour, puts out a shitload of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple into three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into four pieces!

It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie.

A monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what’s the problem?

— Philip Wadler, Alleged

If its silly and it works, its still silly

After a tragedy is when all of the offensive jokes show up.

— Trevor

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marks four my revue
miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a quay and type a word
and weight for it to say
Weather eye yam wrong oar write.
It shows me strait a weigh

— Ode to a spell checker, Jerrold Zar

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

— Edsger Dijkstra

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing

— Alan Perlis

A nuclear bomb always hits ground zero.

— Soviet Military Joke

Convention is the enemy of interesting

Well, that does it

— Louis Slotin, Right after disarming “Rufus”

You’re incapable of that level of incompetence.

— Riker

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

99% of the computer problems sit in front of one.

In pursuit of great, we failed to do good

You cannot possibly afford to be this naive

Opposites attract, alikes repel,
Studying electrodynamics is living hell

You buy a hamster to teach your kids about death

— Unknown

If you lower the goals you will always achieve them

There are moments of cromulence

— DankPods

Plausible deniability goes a long way

Science isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be right

— Brian David Gilbert

Ignorance is the greatest source of risk

— Me

The bible was written to make a character more marketable to kids in the ’90s.

— Brian David Gilbert

They tried to tell me it couldn’t be done
They were right, it can’t be done!

— The Zanies – The Mad Scientist

“Legacy code” often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.

— Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++

Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I guess you could call it a “failure”, but I prefer the term “learning experience”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

As with most of life’s problems, this one can be solved by a box of pure radiation.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Everything went great right up to the explosion.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I need to ask myself, ‘What would an Apollo astronaut do?’ He’d drink three whiskey sours, drive his Corvette to the launchpad, then fly to the moon in a command module smaller than my Rover. Man those guys were cool.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I’m not dead, so it’s a win.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

As usual, I’m working with stuff that was deliberately designed not to burn. But no amount of careful design by NASA can get around a determined arsonist with a tank of pure oxygen.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

They say no plan survives first contact with implementation. I’d have to agree.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I’m traveling 90 kilometers per day as usual, but I only get 37 kilometers closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?

— Andy Weir, Artemis

Frankly, I suspect you’re a super-villain. You’re a chemist, you have a German accent, you had a base on Mars…what more can there be?

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Astronauts are inherently insane. And really noble.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

They’re not much different from kitchen trash bags, though I’m sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

The worst moments in life are heralded by small observations.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

It’s a simple idiot-proofing scheme that’s very effective. But no idiot-proofing can overcome a determined idiot.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

To them, equipment failure is terrifying. To me, it’s “Tuesday.”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

It seemed to work well. The seal looked strong and the resin was rock-hard. I did, however, glue my hand to the helmet.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

There aren’t many people who can say they’ve vandalized a three-billion-dollar spacecraft, but I’m one of them.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

With no magnetic field, Mars has no defense against harsh solar radiation. If I were exposed to it, I’d get so much cancer, the cancer would have cancer.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

A clumsy, awkward success is still a success.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I started with a large rigid sample container (or “plastic box” to people who don’t work at NASA).

— Andy Weir, The Martian

We’re as smart as evolution made us. So we’re the minimum intelligence needed to ensure we can dominate our planets.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

If you want to play it safe all the time, go join an insurance company.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

The planet’s famous red colour is from iron oxide coating everything. So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

The battery was a lithium thionyl chloride non-rechargeable. I figured that out from some subtle clues: the shape of the connection points, the thickness of the insulation, and the fact that it had “LiSOCl2 NON-RCHRG” written on it.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I am smiling a great smile. The smile of a man who fucked with his car and didn’t break it.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?” “Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.” “That’s…dark.” “That’s Russian!”

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

Five a.m. was a largely theoretical concept to me. I knew it existed, but I rarely observed it.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

People will trust a reliable criminal more readily than a shady businessman.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I could have finished faster, but I figured caution’s best when setting fire to rocket fuel in an enclosed space.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

In other news, It’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause The Great Martian Potato Migration.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Blissful unconsciousness became foggy awareness which transitioned into painful reality.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

LOG ENTRY: SOL 36 Things are finally going my way. In fact, they’re going great! I have a chance to live after all!
LOG ENTRY: SOL 37 I am fucked, and I’m gonna die!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

How did I end up in this situation? I’m the district sales manager of a napkin factor. Why is my daughter in space?

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Life is amazingly tenacious. They don’t want to die any more than I do.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

My conclusion was “Fuck it.”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I could cut off an arm and eat it, gaining me valuable calories and reducing my overall caloric need.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I used a sophisticated method to remove sections of plastic (hammer), then carefully removed the solid foam insulation (hammer again).

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Q. Star Wars or Star Trek? A. Doctor Who.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

This all sounds like a great idea with no chance of catastrophic failure. That was sarcasm, by the way.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

“Fuck you,” he said to the planet below.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Evolution can be insanely effective when you leave it alone for a few billion years.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

Humanity’s first miscommunication with an intelligent alien race. Glad I could be a part of it.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

How dare you call me lazy? I’d come up with a scathing retort but, meh, I’m just not motivated.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

One thing I have in abundance here are bags. They’re not much different than kitchen trash bags, though I’m sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I knew what I had to do—I just didn’t like it. I’d have to blow the remaining two at the same time.
Please don’t quote that last sentence out of context.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit. A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just fucking die.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Space is dangerous. It’s what we do here. If you want to play it safe all the time, go join an insurance company.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

It’s a terrible thing to have my life depend on my half-assed handiwork.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Damn it, Jim, I’m a botanist, not a chemist!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

— Andy Weir, The Egg

“Sorry for the delay,” Vogel said. “I was required to make a bomb.”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

But I have to save humanity first. Stupid humanity. Getting in the way of my hobbies.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

By the way, we also hate it when people . . . call Artemis “the city in space.” We’re not in space; we’re on the moon. I’m mean, technically, we’re in space, but so is London.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

God damn it! I yelled to him. Will you stop wining about your problems during my murder!

— Andy Weir, Artemis

“I admit it’s fatally dangerous,” Watney said. “But consider this: I’d get to fly around like Iron Man.”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Here’s a woman who had survived the centrifuge, the vomit comet, hard-landing drills and 10k runs. A woman who fixed a simulated MDV computer failure while being spun around upside-down. But she was afraid of a tattoo needle.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

My life is now a desperate struggle for survival…with occasional titration.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Godspeed, little taters. My life depends on you.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Presuming I don’t fuck up with the hydrazine, there’s still the matter of burning hydrogen. I’m going to be setting a fire. In the Hab. On purpose. If you asked every engineer at NASA what the worst scenario for the Hab was, they’d all answer “fire.” If you asked them what the result would be, they’d answer “death by fire.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

From this, I concluded the following:
1. I’ve been in a dust storm for several sols.
2. Shit.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

That’s pretty much a rule in electronics: You never get diodes right on the first try.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

The worst moments in life are heralded by small observations. The tiny lump on your side that wasn’t there before. Coming home to your wife and seeing two wineglasses in the sink. Anytime you hear “We interrupt this program…”

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I got bounced around a lot, but I’m a well-honed machine in times of crisis. As soon as the rover toppled, I curled into a ball and cowered. That’s the kind of action hero I am.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Half-ration for dinner. All I accomplished today was thinking up a plan that’ll kill me, and that doesn’t take much energy.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

You started my training by buying me a beer. For breakfast. Germans are awesome.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

“How long will the patch take?” Venkat asked. “Should be pretty much instant,” Jack answered. “Watney entered the hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder’s OS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we should get a connection.” “Jesus, what a complicated process,” Venkat said. “Try updating a Linux server sometime,” Jack said.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

If my neighborhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as “shitty, with overtones of failure and poor life decisions.”

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I didn’t want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

And if you want to make babies, somebody’s got to get fucked.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

I’ll need to trick out a rover. Basically it’ll have to be a mobile Hab. I’ll pick Rover 2 as my target. We have a certain bond, after I spent two days in it during the Great Hydrogen Scare of Sol 37.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukrainian guy.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

Something very hot and very explodey had happened

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Now on to my next task: sitting around with nothing to do for twelve hours. I better get started!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Ever set up a camping tent? From the inside? While wearing a suit of armor? It was a pain in the ass.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

It’s all part of the life-cycle of an economy. First it’s lawless capitalism until that starts to impede growth. Next comes regulation, law enforcement, and taxes. After that: public benefits and entitlements. Then, finally, overexpenditure and collapse.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

Sometimes, the stuff we all hate ends up being the only way to do things.

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

I’ll be playing with high-voltage power tomorrow. Can’t imagine anything going wrong with that!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

If I make any mistakes, there’ll be nothing left but the “Mark Watney Memorial Crater” where the Hab once stood.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I washed it down with some Martian coffee. That’s my name for “hot water with a caffeine pill dissolved in it.” I ran out of real coffee months ago.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Fun fact: This is exactly how the Apollo 1 crew died. Wish me luck!

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I’m pretty much fucked.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

I can see it now: me holding a map, scratching my head, trying to figure out how I ended up on Venus.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Software engineers are sneaky bastards when it comes to data management.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Just once I’d like something to go as planned, ya know?

— Andy Weir, The Martian

“Well, you’re not alone anymore, buddy,” I say. “Neither of us are.”

— Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

That’s the thing about crying yourself to sleep. When you wake up, the problems are still there.

— Andy Weir, Artemis

It’s about as hot and loud as a volcano during mating season

— Aging Wheels

The steering wheel. To go left or anti left.

Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

— Yogi Berra

Remember the 5 D’s of Dodgeball: Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and Dodge

— Patches O’Houlihan

I don’t know what the problem is, so lets do some exploratory surgery!

— Robert Dunn, Aging Wheels

As I was saying, before I rudely interrupted myself.

— Robert Dunn, Aging Wheels

Why reinvent the wheel when you can just change the tire instead.

— Me

Life is like Tetris; if it doesn’t fit, just flip it over

— Sabine Hein

I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that technology doesn’t matter to game design. The example I always like to point out is ‘Tetris,’ one of the greatest games ever made.

— Tim Schafer

When I walk into a room, you’d think I was one of those long, straight Tetris pieces because everyone’s just like, Oh great, you’re here! We’ve been waiting for you to show up.

— Bo Burnham

Java is like a variant of the game of Tetris in which none of the pieces can fill gaps created by the other pieces, so all you can do is pile them up endlessly.

— Steve Yegge

If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.

Tetris teaches you that when you try to fit in you’ll disappear

All the science is either physics or stamp collecting

— Ernest Rutherford

There is no quote

— Try again later

It’s easier to be a famous pilot than it is to be a good pilot.

Beautiful things are still beautiful, even if they have mud on them.

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

— Mike Wazowski

“Tell me Dr. Floyd what has happened to American bravery?”
“It’s alive and well thank you. What happened to Russian common sense?”

— 2010 (1984)

DNS is the root of all problems

The resistor is the wrong way around!

If a full load of 12 gauge 00 Buck can’t solve a problem then the problem is unsolvable.

— Clint Smith

It just works

— Todd Howard

I believe everything that has been taught to me can be taught to others if they’re willing to learn

— Mycheal Shane

Fair. Fair statement, I think.

— Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari

As the well-known Italian saying goes, “the 9th time better f*cking work”

— Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari

Sometimes, the best inventions are the ones that have already been invented

— Thomas Edison

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

— Mark Twain

Streets full of water – please advise.

— Robert Benchley, Telegram sent to his editor upon arriving in Venice

It’s a boy.

— Edward Teller, Telegram sent about the first hydrogen bomb, 1952

Jumping Jehovah James that’s a scimtar he’s got.

— Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari

The strange hotdog wizard was clearly sick of seeing me succeed

— Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari

One smile can hide a thousand tears

— Jonathan “JonTron” Jafari

They’re not abandoned, they’re done.

The engines failed to shut down, sending the probe into lithobraking trajectory.

[…] If they hit 90% full, you should consider your own personal pants to be on actual fire, and react with an appropriate amount of immediacy to remedy that.

“You cant teach people how to make a firearm”
“Its not a firearm, its an explosive!”

— Brandon Herrera, The pipe gun incident

I’m not [a] mad [scientist], I’m just disappointed.

— Reagan Ridley

“Don’t worry, that happens sometimes”
“Of course it happens sometimes, it just did”

If you are questioning your belief daily, maybe pick another belief

— Me

“Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
“It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.”
— Terry Pratchett
Therefore, I reason, Science = Magic

The real secret to success is enthusiasm

Work hard in silence. Let success make the noise

Success is the result of small efforts, repeated

— R Collier

Success isn’t overnight. Its when every day you get a little better than the day before.

— DTRJ

The best revenge is massive success

The poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man

— Kafka

There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

— Johann Sebastian Bach

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

— John Lennon

Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

— John Steinbeck

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

— Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

— Henry David Thoreau

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

— Henry David Thoreau

Things do not change; we change.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

— Henry David Thoreau

Be not simply good – be good for something.

— Henry David Thoreau

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

— Henry David Thoreau

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

— Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

— Henry David Thoreau

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

— Henry David Thoreau

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

— Henry David Thoreau

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

— Albert Einstein

You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

— Robin Williams

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

— Dr. Seuss

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

— Carl Sagan

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

It’s not a job if you love what you’re doing

For five seconds, I was God. Then, I was a dead man.

— World Record Bullet Headbutt Champion

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

— Arthur F. Curtis

One day, somewhere in the future, my work will be quoted!

You should try using smaller words that mean more

How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings?

— Gus Grissom, Ironically, not recieved by the other two buildings

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

— Henry Ford (Alleged)

A poor appetite for books eventually leads to intellectual malnutrition.

— William Arthur Ward

Well done is better than well said.

— Benjamin Franklin

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

— E. B. White

Scientists will save us all.

— John Gunther, Jr.

There is no courtesy in science.

— Alonzo Clark, M.D.

Physics is the basic science. One can easily argue that all other sciences are specialized aspects of physics.

— Isaac Asimov

When gravity calls, something falls.

— J.L.W. Brooks

There is no gravity. The earth sucks.

— Graffito

Ah, gravity: thou art a heartless b*tch.

— Robert Cohen, Chuck Lorre, and Bill Prady

All science hangs together. It’s one piece. If you want to stop one part, you’ve got to stop it all.

— Isaac Asimov

Engineering is merely the slow younger brother of physics.

— Steven Molaro and Daley Haggar

I don’t care how you get potassium out of kelp; I want to know how kelp gets potassium out of the sea.

— Willis R. Whitney

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

— Elbert Hubbard

Don’t judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.

The point of chemistry is not to be barbaric, the point of chemistry is to *play god*

— Tom, Explosions And Fire

Don’t ask me for funding

— Tom

We’ve got an 80-90% yield already and all I’ve done is weigh out one reagent

— Tom

You can’t treat your life’s work as a part time job

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2034, paraphrased

Too much thinking leads to doubts

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2034, paraphrased

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

My mind is like a browser: 30 tabs open, 5 tabs are frozen and I have no idea where the music is coming from.

Hahahahahahaha

— Mara Aramov

Learn to spoken

Learn to spelling

An educated guess, but a guess nonetheless

— Me

With patience, everything goes faster

— MD

I didn’t fall in love, I gently descended!

— Me

Before you say anything, I would like to remind you that I’m holding an ax.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

So, summing up, we’re wrong about everything.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

The fact that I’m upright is a credit to our French press.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

Don’t play dumb with me, you’re not smart enough.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

I know all about poisons, Watson, I’ve become an expert on them. But over the past few years, I’ve come to understand that there is nothing on this planet so toxic as guilt.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

Is it safe? No. Is it effective? I’m not even sure yet.

— Styropyro

It’s never too late to be wise.

— Robinson Crusoe

We aren’t planning on doing anything about it

— Bethesda Games

The only thing I really know is that I know nothing.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

— Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

Violence is the mark of the amateur.

— Garrett, Thief

Everything works in Theory, I’m thinking about moving there.

Big Iron is nothing compared to Small Soviet Steel

— Unofficial Makarov Slogan

My brain got me in here, it can get me out

You can give a man a hammer, but you can’t determine what he does with it.

I’m strong to the “finich”, ’cause I eats me spinach.

— Lyric from “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man”

If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

— Albert Einstein

Hiking is like walking but there is a big hill in the way

Probable death to escape certain death

— John Young, Commenting on the Gemini Ejection System

I also constantly wonder if I have had either too much, or not enough caffeine

— James Hoffmann

Probably the toughest time in anyone’s life is when you have to murder a loved one because they’re the devil.

— Emo Philips

Friday afternoon, I’m walking home from school and I’m watching some men build a new house.
And the guy hammering on the roof calls me a paranoid little weirdo. In Morse code.

— Emo Philips

Close enough for government work.

Even when they do something wrong, they don’t do it right.

There’s a seahorse in my Coke!

— Barry Lewis

This is too much carbonated milk

— Joe Barnard, Founder of BPS.Space

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

— Albert Einstein

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.

— Elbert Hubbard

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.

— Elbert Hubbard

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.

— Elbert Hubbard

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

— Elbert Hubbard

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

— Elbert Hubbard

Never explain―your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

— Elbert Hubbard

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

— Elbert Hubbard

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

— Elbert Hubbard

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.

— Elbert Hubbard

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.

— Elbert Hubbard

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

— Elbert Hubbard

If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.

— Elbert Hubbard

I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love…I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts.

— Elbert Hubbard, Optimist

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

— Elbert Hubbard

Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

— Elbert Hubbard

I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

— Elbert Hubbard

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.

— Elbert Hubbard

No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.

— Elbert Hubbard

I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.

— Elbert Hubbard

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

— Elbert Hubbard

Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.

— Elbert Hubbard

True life lies in laughter, love and work.

— Elbert Hubbard

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

— Elbert Hubbard

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.

— Elbert Hubbard

The line between failure and success is so fine. . . that we are often on the line and do not know it.

— Elbert Hubbard

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

— Elbert Hubbard

Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do

— Elbert Hubbard

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

— Elbert Hubbard

If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.

— Elbert Hubbard

If you can not answer a man’s argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

— Elbert Hubbard

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

— Elbert Hubbard

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

— Elbert Hubbard

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.

— Elbert Hubbard

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

— Elbert Hubbard

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success?

— Elbert Hubbard

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

— Elbert Hubbard

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

— Elbert Hubbard

Men are punished by their sins, not for them.

— Elbert Hubbard

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

— Elbert Hubbard

Laughter is higher than all pain.

— Elbert Hubbard

It’s a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

— Elbert Hubbard

No

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, line 96

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.

— Elbert Hubbard

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

— Elbert Hubbard

The stronger a man is, the more gentle he can afford to be

— Elbert Hubbard

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.

— Elbert Hubbard

Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.

— Elbert Hubbard

Men are only as great as they are kind.

— Elbert Hubbard

We work to become, not to acquire.

— Elbert Hubbard

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.

— Elbert Hubbard

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

— Elbert Hubbard

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

— Elbert Hubbard, Arch nemesis of Cave Johnson

Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.

— Elbert Hubbard

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

— Elbert Hubbard

No one gets very far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.

— Elbert Hubbard

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

— Elbert Hubbard

Opportunities for education should be within the reach of every individual, not for the lucky few.

— Elbert Hubbard

Life is unrest, and its passage at best a zigzag course, that only straightens to a direct line when viewed across the years.

— Elbert Hubbard

Professor [John] Tyndall once said the finest inspiration he ever received was from an old man who could scarcely read. This man acted as his servant. Each morning the old man would knock on the door of the scientist and call, ‘Arise, Sir: it is near seven o’clock and you have great work to do today.

— Elbert Hubbard

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude, and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what we are.

— Elbert Hubbard

Live truth instead of professing it.

— Elbert Hubbard

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

— Elbert Hubbard

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

— Elbert Hubbard

Business, to be successful, must be based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics, not guesswork.

— Elbert Hubbard

The graveyards are full of people the world could not do without.

— Elbert Hubbard

In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done, quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.

— Elbert Hubbard

Do not dump your woes upon people — keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them.

— Elbert Hubbard

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

— Elbert Hubbard

Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem to be the three ingredients that are most needed in forming the Gentleman.

— Elbert Hubbard

The typical accountant is a man, past middle age, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, passive, non-committal, with eyes like a cod-fish; polite in contact but at the same time unresponsive, calm and damnably composed as a concrete post or a plaster of Paris cast; a petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm of the friendly germ, minus bowels, passion or a sense of humor. Happily they never reproduce and all of them finally go to Hell.

— Elbert Hubbard, Savage

Work to become, not to acquire.

— Elbert Hubbard

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

— Elbert Hubbard

And now for something completely different

[Citation Needed]

A good reaction vessel always has an opening. If it doesn’t, it will have one soon, one way or the other

Mispronouncing words is a sign of reading a lot

The only chemistry that should be done in a bedroom is not one that many chemists get anyway

I was smart enough to make a fireball outside, but not smart enough to not make a fireball.

— Unknown

You don’t win the nobel prize for solving easy problems

— Tom

Cascade over-current failure is always an option

This feels cheap, because it is cheap.

— James Hoffmann

There are few thing more entertaining than a very British man in mild discomfort

It seems that the tinfoil hat wearers are actually on to something.

— Techmoan

I’ve been accused of being creative.
I’m just me.

— 1o57

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

— Renzo Piano

If you are ever trying to get the eye out of a fish, and it blinks, it may be a lion.

— David James Stuart Mitchell

Medical advice is to put nothing smaller than your elbow into your ear.

— Qi

We can see the moon passing by the window and it looks what I consider to be a correct size.

— Michael Collins, During the Apollo 11 Reentry Procedure

Ah, thank you babe.

— Charles M. Duke Jr., CapCom for Apollo 11, speaking to Micheal Collins, T-51 seconds before liftoff

Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘No’.

— Betteridge’s Law of Headlines

There is no such thing as fish!

— Stephen Jay Gould

I recognize that the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid decision I’ve elected to ignore it

— Nick

If two trains meet on the same track neither is allowed to continue until one of them has passed.

— Law in Arkansas

Gordon doesn’t need to hear that, he’s a trained professional

— scientist_02

If you want to camouflage an airplane, simply paint it as a ship!

Pluto is not a planet, its a Disney character

CAUTION: Hot things are hot!

Warning: Widget might display things other than quotes!

— The Sign Painter

Sometimes, it doesn’t just work

— Todd Howard

There is nothing funny about making people laugh

— Stephen Fry, QI

It’s a mans job to protect his bitch from seagulls

— Stephen Fry

The one I can vaguely remember, I’m 90% sure, is a 100% correct!

Every defect gets respect

— Laura Kampf, Maybe

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

— Henry David Thoreau

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.

— Henry David Thoreau

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

— Henry David Thoreau

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

— Henry David Thoreau

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear.

— Henry David Thoreau

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

— Henry David Thoreau

I love a bar that is so low that I can crawl over it.

— Simone Giertz

I have no training legally….. But I am right.

— David James Stuart Mitchell

This is more annoying than my microwave!

— Alan Davies

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

— Mark Twain

Scientists conducted an experiment on how far frogs can leap after being startled by a loud noise.
1. A frog was startled by a klaxon and the jump measured 44 inches.
2. Scientists removed one foreleg. The startled frog jumped 33 inches.
3. Another foreleg removed and the startled frog jumped 22 inches.
4. One rear leg removed and the startled frog jumped 12 inches.
5. The other rear leg removed and the startled frog didn’t move forward 1 inch.
6. Scientists deduced that a frog with all four legs removed becomes deaf.

I don’t want to be relatable, I want to be trustworthy

— Tom Scott

Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.

— Arnold H. Glasow

Mile for mile, elevators are the safest form of travel.

Less a shot in the dark, more a duel at dawn.

— Me

I’ll make it my number three priority!

— Guybrush Threepwood

Step 1: read all the instructions

— The instructions

With patience, everything goes faster

— MD

“That’s tomorrow problem”
“How did you think we arrived at today”

Int is just blue dex

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Slow progress is lasting progress

According to a popular legend, during a tour of NASA headquarters in 1961, John F. Kennedy encountered a janitor mopping the floors.
“Why are you working so late?” Kennedy asked.
“Mr President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

Rocketry
For when gravity is keeping you down

God help us, were in the hands of engineers!

I’m not negative, I’m realistic.

Nuclear weapons may be a currency of peace….
But what a terrible price.

People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

— Calvin, Calvin And Hobbs

It’s not that we deny climate change, it’s more like we ignore it to stay competitive

— Shell VP

Balloon shaped tanks, the Zeppelins of the floor

As long as you know which end of the screwdriver to hammer on, you’ll be fine.

— Old saying, Alleged

A camel is a horse designed by a committee

There’s no nondestructive test for indestructibility.

— Randall Munroe, How To

Nobody likes a naked singularity.

— Dr. Cindy Keeler, What if 2

Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate.

— Horace Fletcher

Certain things are still going to take all week no matter how half you ass them.

— Dan Olson

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

— John Rogers

The line between variety and chaos, is a fine one.

— Dan Olson

People have interesting relationships with monoliths

— Dan Olson

Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.

— Ron Swanson

我的中文不好

To give real service, you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money

— Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, Civil Engineer

What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
I don’t believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all.

— Charles Augustus Lindbergh

Art without engineering is dreaming.
Engineering without art is calculating.

— Steven Roberts

I love cheese, It’s like butter

— Brooklyn Beckham

Martin Scorsese calls modern movies theme park rides, and modern movies respond by shaking your chair around and covering you in fake snow.

How does it feel to have lived long enough to see all your favorite franchises go down in flames?

— Rich Evans

I fear not a man who sold thousands of games, I fear a man who sold one game a thousand times.

Don’t stress it, just try it.

— If you can

As soon as you see a bug, you fix it. Do not continue on. If you don’t fix your bugs, your new code will be built on a buggy codebase and ensure an unstable foundation.

— John Romero

One problem solved is another hundred revealed

Don’t shoot, I’ve got so many year to live!

— Rich Evans

The welsh language, clearly invented by someone losing at scrabble.

Guns are magical. I point at creature and it dies.

— Ross

If you are attempting to keep me quiet on the subject you’ve just made a horrendous error

— Paul Merton

In my house we don’t throw away perfectly good food.
We put it in the back of the refrigerator for a few weeks until it goes bad and then we throw it out.

— Lonnie Jizzenhall

Please don’t dump radioactive waste in the municipal trash.

— Government

Different people are different

— Hank

It’s not good, but its not that bad.

— William Osman, On X-Rays

I’d call for all the chemists who’ve ever worked with a hexanitro compound to raise their hands, but that might be assuming too much about the limb-to-chemist ratio.

— Derek Lowe, Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane

[…] and you’re left with crystals of pure CL-20 soaking in liquid TNT, a situation that will heighten your awareness of the fleeting nature of life.

— Derek Lowe, Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane

One eyewitness described the incident by stating, “The concrete was on fire!”

— Safetygram #39, Chlorine Trifluoride

If I’m running, try to keep up.

— Bomb technician

Will it work? You only know after the experiment!

The art of wondering makes life worth living

Don’t expect something that never happened

— Kyle

The trick is to play music louder than your thoughts.

With great processing power comes great responsibility

— Hackerman

If a person builds it a person can break it

So now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

— Dark Helmet

Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.

— Richard P. Feynman

There’s ALWAYS more room to store stuff on the Z axis, if you’re paying attention.

— Adam Savage

When life gives you lemons, you’ve run out of oranges

— Daniel Hardcastle, Podcats

Sweet biscuits, I’m alive

— Vision

I’m confused, are you an idiot, or do you think I am.

— Kappa Kaiju

Introducing the elephants, as if donkeys weren’t enough

— krispykarim, history of the united states, i guess

New and improved!

— Samuel Colt

And now for something completely different.

— John Cleese

In every walk with nature
one receives far more than he seeks.

— John Muir

The last 10% of a job takes as much effort as the first 90%
Which is why it’s so important to always give 110%

The last 10% of a job takes as much energy as the first 90%
Which is why it’s so important to always give 110%

Quantum mechanics is kinda weird

— Ryan McBeth

More bacon, child!

— David James Stuart Mitchell

There is no point! this is a pointless exercise! we are whining away our finite time before the grave!

— David James Stuart Mitchell, Family friendly tv show

You can have anything you want, so long as it’s in moderation.

Any sufficiently crude magic is indistinguishable from technology

— Renowned Technowizard

Who as a child did not lie in bed filled with a slowly mounting terror while sinking into the idea of a universe that goes on and on, for ever and ever?

— Rudy Rucker

Safety was later invented by John H. Safety in 1959

How are we going to land?
To the best of our ability.

— Pilot

“What’s the worst can happen?”
“Let’s find out and keep notes!”

Voltage does not flow, nor does it go.

I do 7 things at a time, I do them very well, and then I move on.

— Liar

We’re Germans, so it must be correct in the end.

— Prof. Dr. Rainer O. Neugebauer

Aircraft design is aggressively safe

The cats, respiratorily failed

— Tarn Adams, DF Creator

Creativity is the art of hiding one’s influences

I was looking forward to that plot twist

— Daniel Condren

The O-ring will not function at that temperature!

Main bus B undervolt

The wrist is like the achilles heel of the body

— Zach Cregger

Good golly, miss molly!

— Robert Dunn

I made a plan that was fool proof. Too bad it isn’t moron proof.

— Robotnik

The maniacal laugh is not just a luxury, it’s a necessity

For some, the maniacal laugh is not just a luxury, it’s a necessity

Talent is like electricity.
We don’t understand electricity, we use it.

— Maya Angelou

Falling off a bicycle is like dying: You will.

— Me

Curdled milk, of a peculiar kind, made after a Bulgarian recipe and called “yaghurt,” is now a Parisian fad and is believed to be a remedy against growing old.
A correspondent who has tried it, says he would prefer to die young.

— The Elk Falls Journal, 1905

If C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, Forth is a flamethrower crawling with cobras.

— Elliot Williams

Bits are bits, provided you have all of them

In my defense, I was left unsupervised

Two is one
One is none

— The rule of redundancy

This is the future.
To find out what I’m talking about, let’s go, to the past.

— Robert Dunn, Aging Wheels

Here’s something I’m not looking forward to, all of it!

— Robert Dunn, Aging Wheels

We have a T-Rex!

— John Hammond

The true beauty of a self-inquiring sentient universe is lost on those who elect to walk the intellectually vacuous path of comfortable paranoid fantasies.

— 雷足

Knowledge is useless without wisdom

Wisdom is useless without knowledge

There are only two hard things in computer science: Cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors

The space shuttle was designed, at least in part, to broaden our knowledge of the universe. To scientists, the vehicle was a tool; to engineers, it was their creation.

— Henry Petroski

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

— Confucius

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

— Socrates

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

— Nicolaus Copernicus

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

— John Naisbitt

Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.

— Abu Bakr

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

— Marcus Garvey

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

— Kofi Annan

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

— Plato

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

— Warren Buffett

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

— Marilyn vos Savant

Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.

— Robin Morgan

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

— T. S. Eliot

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.
To know is not to be wise.
Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool.
But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

— Charles Spurgeon

Many new technologies come with a promise to change the world, but the world refuses to cooperate.

— Henry Petroski

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.

— Henry Petroski

The definition of ‘safe’ is not strictly an engineering term; it’s a societal term. Does it mean absolutely no loss of life? Does it mean absolutely no contamination with radiation? What exactly does ‘safe’ mean?

— Henry Petroski

An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

— Henry David Thoreau

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

— Henry Petroski

Any design, whether it’s for a ship or an airplane, must be done in anticipation of potential failures.

— Henry Petroski

Everything we do is designed, whether we’re producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.

— Henry Petroski

I’m a firm believer that no matter how small an object is, you can find interesting things out about it and its history.

— Henry Petroski

It is really want, rather than need, that drives the process of technological evolution.

— Henry Petroski

As long as there are things to wonder about, there are stories to be written about them.
That makes me happy, because writing about things seems to be my thing.

— Henry Petroski

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

— Henry Petroski

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by things large and small. I wanted to know what made my watch tick, my radio play, and my house stand. I wanted to know who invented the bottle cap and who designed the bridge. I guess from early on I wanted to be an engineer.

— Henry Petroski

Although engineers want always to make everything better, they cannot make anything perfect. This basic characteristic flaw of the products of the profession’s practitioners is what drives change and makes achievement a process rather than simply a goal.

— Henry Petroski

Luxury, not necessity, is the mother of invention. Every artifact is somewhat wanting in its function, and that is what drives its evolution.

— Henry Petroski

The same aspirations to celebrate and uplift the spirit that drove the Egyptians to build the pyramids are still driving us. The things we’re doing differ only in magnitude.

— Henry Petroski

It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.

— Henry Petroski

All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth – it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations.

— Henry Petroski

No design, no matter how common or seemingly insignificant, is without its adamant critics as well as its ardent admirers.

— Henry Petroski

It has been said, by engineers themselves, that given enough money, they can accomplish virtually anything: send men to the moon, dig a tunnel under the English Channel. There’s no reason they couldn’t likewise devise ways to protect infrastructure from the worst hurricanes, earthquakes and other calamities, natural and manmade.

— Henry Petroski

We can’t simply blame the engineers when things go wrong because, no matter how well they plan, things don’t always go according to plan.

— Henry Petroski

I relax by looking at things and reading about things. Even the simplest thing can reveal a great deal about the world around us. It relaxes me greatly to sit back with my feet up and look around my study at the everyday things that surround me.

— Henry Petroski

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

— Henry Petroski

Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.

— Henry Petroski

Design is nothing if not decision making.

— Henry Petroski

Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also admirable.

— Henry Petroski

Life can be a challenge, it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. Just look inside, and you will find the Pokémon.

— Herman Cain

If someone ever calls you a “nerd” on the internet, in a derogatory fashion, simply use the same technology he is using to gently remind him of the group of people that actually designed it
Him calling you a nerd is only possible because of the talented nerds of the world

As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.

— Vaarsuvius’ theorem.

I’m like lead, slightly toxic but otherwise inert

— Me

Normal people use audio hardware to listen to music, audiophiles use music to listen the audio hardware

“That doesn’t make any sense”
“Does anything”

Work smart, not hard

You see, the thing about being a corn farmer, is that you don’t just grow the corn, you grow with the corn.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

— Ken Olson, President, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value

— Excerpt from an 1865 Boston Post editorial.

I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.

— The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?

— David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.

— Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.
He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

— 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work. Note that the day after Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, the New York Times printed a short boxed item on page 2. It read in full:, “Errata: It has now been conclusively demonstrated that a rocket ship can travel through the vacuum of space. The Times sincerely regrets the error.”

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.

— Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

— Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

— Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

— Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

While working one should be committed and not just involved, in a bacon and egg breakfast as an example: The chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

Did we really fight our way to the top of the food chain to become vegetarians?

Las Vegas is a town built on bad mathematics.

Be safety conscious. 80% of people are caused by accidents.

WARNING! The dates in a Calendar are closer than they appear.

Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

— Epitaph

Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much –the wheel, New York, wars and so on — while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.
But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.

— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

I’m a simple man trying to drive a simple photochemical ring closure reaction. What could be more simple?

— Tom, Explosions And Fire

Dr. Frankenstein reanimated the Dead.
Only a Monster would kill the living.

— RIP-Felix, On Repairing PS3’s

Anyone who’s tells you they’re certain about how the world works is either a mathematician or they’re selling something

— Tom Scott

History is fractal

— Tom Scott

Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths we take , but by the moments that take our breathe away

Economics is just astrology with uglier graphs.

— Sabrina Cruz

Look At You, Sailing Through The Air Majestically, Like An Eagle…Piloting A Blimp.

— GLaDOS

How Are You Holding Up? Because I’m A Potato.

— PotatOS

Man, are you hungry? I haven’t eaten since later this afternoon.

— Aaron, Primer

I think my body’s getting used to these 36-hour days.

— Aaron, Primer

The world trembled at the sound of our rockets, well they will tremble again, at the sound of our silence

— Marco Ramius

Remember, the S in IoT stands for “security”!

The failure modes of a spanner are far fewer than that of a helicopter.

— Why simplicity relates to reliability

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

— Isaac Newton

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

— Vladimir Lenin

Remember that all is but opinion and conceit

— Marcus Aurelius

Spooky math at a distance

— Quantum Mechanics

Only entropy comes easy

— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

— Peter Drucker

We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed.

— The Glomar response

Cause of death: Presumed dead

— Death certificate for the Captain Second Rank, Alexander M. Zhuravin, K-129

Very little gets in the way of human error

— Gary Ruddell, Cybersecurity Expert

The fact that no one has ever hijacked a plane with a pair of nail scissors is a demonstration of the effectiveness of confiscating them at airport security.

Debt is like rocket fuel, it can either bring you to the moon, or end like the N-1

Rules are there to make you think before you break them

— Salvor Hadrin

Don’t eat it!

— Tiff, reminding Kirby not to eat a camera

я не говорю по-русски

The degree of failure is in direct proportion to the effort expended and to the need for success.

— Sod’s Law

A mosquito was heard to complain:
“A chemist has poisoned my brain!”
The cause of his sorrow
was para-dichloro-
diphenyltrichloroethane

Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade isn’t your friend anymore.

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.

— G. K. Chesterton

There’s a lot to be said for putting competing non-existent services in the same RF band, I suppose….

— Alan H. Jones, Olivetti & Oracle Research Laboratory

Oh God, please make the world linear and Gaussian, just for today.

— Anonymous

Happiness is the derivative (in the mathematical sense) of progress.

— Dave Munson

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.

— Unknown

It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed complicated.
The goal of a scientist is to find an interesting problem, and live off it for a while.
The goal of an engineer is to evade interesting problems.

— Vadim Antonov, on NANOG

For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

— Winston Churchill

A ship is safe in a harbor. But a harbor is not what a ship is for.

— Anonymous

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks.
All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes or of appearing naive.

— Abraham Maslow, Psychologist and Philosopher

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

— Japanese Zen-master Shunryu Suzuki

How Specs Live Forever

The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that’s the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United State standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever. So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

— Tom O’Hare, Professor Germanic Lanuages, University of Texas

Giving up is the ultimate tragedy.

— Robert J. Donovan

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.

— Mitch Radcliffe

There were in this country two very large monopolies.

The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War,
Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt
airlines, and the 8-cent postcard.

The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar
cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound
motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape,
magnetic “bubbles”, electronic switching systems, microwave radio and
TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital
computer, and the first communications satellite.

Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business?

— From the UNIX Fortunes

When flying at such altitudes, with strong winds changing direction and speed with altitude, you were lucky if your bombs at least hit the ground

— WW2 Historian on the Norden Bombsight

The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

The only good way to solve a differential equation is to know the answer already.

— Richard P. Feynman

Don’t train alone, it’ll only reinforce your mistakes.

— Vesemir

How could we have seen this coming?
Well it turns out, by reading a book!

— Matt Parker

Ideas are worthless if you can’t turn them into reality

— mitxela

Ideas are worthless, execution is everything

Ideas are worthless unless we act on them.

— Earl Nightingale

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

— Robert Ingersoll

Speed never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you

— Jeremy Clarkson

The job of a pilot is not to land the aircraft, but to land it in a way that allows it to take off again

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

— Mike Wazowski

Obviously, this blue part here is the land.

— Byron “Buster” Bluth, reading a map

I am a certified expert in falling upwards

— Richard Evans

What’s he up to now? It’ll be something devious and over-complicated. He’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.

— The Rani (about The Master), Doctor Who, “The Mark of the Rani”

Fate is like a caged gorilla. It will pelt you with dung if you mock it.

— Warriv, Diablo II

Mal: But say you do it. You kill me. What then?
Dobson: I dunno. I imagine I’ll get a hobby or something.

— Serenity: Those Left Behind

What a terrible day to be literate

I don’t need the threat of Hell to be a good person.

— Unknown Athiest

How hard can it be?

— Jeremy Clarkson

If you are clinically insane, by which I mean you wake up in the morning, and you think you are an onion, this is your car

— Jeremy Clarkson, about the BMW X3

Hollywood movies are designed for 15-year-old youths from North Dakota who, intellectually speaking, are on equal terms with a British zoo animal.

— Jeremy Clarkson

These people go on to tell us that mobile phones will cook our children’s ears, that long-haul flights will fill our legs with thrombosis and that meat is murder. They want an end to all deaths – and it doesn’t stop there. They don’t even see why anyone should have to suffer from a spot of light bruising.
Every week, as we filmed my television chat show, food would be spilt on the floor, and every week the recording would have to be stopped so it could be swept away. ‘What would happen,’ said the man from health and safety, ‘if a cameraman were to slip over?’ ‘Well,’ I would reply, ‘he’d probably have to stand up again.’

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

She can take a year to read something, whereas I like a book that becomes more important in my life that life itself.
When I was in the middle of ‘Red Storm Rising’ by Tom Clancy – which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist – you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn’t have noticed.

— Jeremy Clarkson

Why is the forecast so bland? Why instead of ‘stormy’ don’t they just say the sea’s ‘a frothing maelstrom of terror and hopelessness’?

— Jeremy Clarkson, For Crying Out Loud!

We are going to have to stop penalizing people for making that most human of gestures- a mistake

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehow missed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000 excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided to buy a footstool.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

No really. If you only have seven years left, that means the Reaper will be dropping round for tea and buns in about 61,000 hours from now. You therefore shouldn’t be wasting time by pootling to the garden centre at walking pace. So come on, grandad. The clock’s ticking. Pedal to the metal. Or you’ll be in your flowerbed before the plants you bought.

— Jeremy Clarkson

Lego, however, is always opened and then left lying around so adults have something to tread on when they are prowling around around the house at two in the morning, in bare feet, looking for the source of a noise.

— Jeremy Clarkson, And Another Thing

…it seemed appropriate that I should develop some kind of illness. This is a good idea when you are at a loose end because everything, up to and including herpes, is better than being bored.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

This is what should be meant by people power. The power for people to choose which of the government’s petty, silly, pointless laws they want to obey. And which they don’t.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.

— Jeremy Clarkson

and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say ‘vanquish’.

— Jeremy Clarkson, And Another Thing: The World According to Clarkson: Volume 2

In the olden days it was easy to make a television work.You plugged an aerial cable into the back, then bashed the top with your fist until, eventually, Hughie Green stopped jumping up and down.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

Do they think that, if left to our own devices, we’d all park on zebra crossings for a year? If they do, it means they don’t trust us. And if they don’t trust us, then the relationship has broken down and it’s time for some civil unrest.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

Maybe it’s an attention-span thing. Music is now the backdrop to our lives rather than an event in itself. We put on a CD while we’re doing something else. I can’t remember the last time I put on an album and listened to it in a chair with my eyes closed.
(Denneth note: I read this only moments after casually putting on some music to add a backdrop to feeding these quotes into my website, make of that what you will)

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Even NASA’s most respected engineers have admitted to me, in private, that designing and building a supersonic airliner was a greater technological challenge than putting a man on the moon.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Mix an anorexic body with a heart made of pure fire and you are going to go with a savagery that’s hard to explain.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Don’t Stop Me Now

To address this, we must wage a war on the militants. First, we must make it an offence, punishable by many years in jail, to ride a bicycle in anything other than what I like to call home clothes. Cycling shops selling gel for your bottom crack and outfits with padded gussets will be raided by the police and the owners prosecuted. This way, cyclists will be stripped of their uniforms and made to look like human beings.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

Everything I have ever bought is in my car. People say it’s a skip and disgusting, and refuse to get in there. That’s one advantage. Another is that last week, I needed a headache pill and it was simply a case of rummaging under the seat until I found one. Because it’s so full of junk, I always have everything I could conceivably need. A Biro, a refreshing drink, lots of loose change, all sorts of maps, an iron lung, and so on. I kid you not. There’s even a wetsuit in there.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Round the Bend

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it’s flying; the next it’s tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it here again, now. Nothing brilliant has ever resulted from a meeting.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

I would like to see a fund set up that does nothing but pay for great public buildings, follies, laser shows, towers, fountains, airships, aqueducts. Big, expensive stuff designed solely to make us go ‘wow’. I even have a name for this fund. We could call it the lottery.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

(on iPhone) the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that I’m a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when I’m on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Round the Bend

Underneath the report about a shortage of scientists was another which said that a professor of acoustics at Salford University has proved that, contrary to popular belief, a duck’s quack does echo.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

The rules of war, then, have always changed as a reaction to the conflict that’s just been fought.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

But here too there’s a problem – the faster you go, the more time slows down. This is a scientific fact. I spend my life driving quickly, which is why I have a 1970s haircut.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

A saloon car has to be fast and comfortable and refined, and all of this stuff costs millions of pounds to develop. An SUV just needs to be big and full of buttons. That costs 8p.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

Some well-known acronyms simply don’t work at all. Pin number, for example. Because what you’re actually saying is ‘personal information number number’. It’s the same with those who refer to the HIV virus. Or an ATM machine. Or an LCD display. Or an ISDN network. Then you have abbreviations that are longer to use than the actual words. Worldwide web, for instance, is three syllables, whereas WWW is nine. And why say: ‘Have you RSVPed?’ when you mean ‘Have you replied?’?

— Jeremy Clarkson, Discovering RAS Syndrome in his book ‘Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?’

Many think the steering wheel is nothing more than a handy place to rest a laptop. Going round a corner at more than 2mph would cause your bucket of coffee to fall over. So why bother?

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

Mercs used to be styled by a man called Brown Bag. I’m not joking. That was his name. Oh, he said it in Italian to make it sound more interesting, but there’s no getting round the fact that Bruno Sacco means Brown Bag.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Round the Bend

The next day I called my neighboring farmers to say I was going to have a coronary, and they all had the same piece of advice. I had to accept whatever happens, because that’s farming. They also said I had to be patient, which is not possible. I can’t be patient. It’s not in my DNA. It’s a bit like telling Nicholas Witchell he has to be a Moroccan cage fighter.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Diddly Squat

The problem is that social media, which is seen as the pulse of the nation, is actually nothing of the sort. It’s the pulse of the young and the idealistic.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can ‘abandon ship’ even when you’re in space.

— Jeremy Clarkson, And Another Thing: The World According to Clarkson: Volume 2

On top of the dashboard are three dials in a raised binnacle. They tell you nothing you need to know but they look good. They look sporty. They tell you that you are a man in a hurry, but here’s hoping you aren’t, because this is not a fast car.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

No. I suspect the reason we choose to visit a supermarket rather than flog around a town that was designed by King Alfred is that it’s so much more convenient. And that, I think, is where a solution to the problem of urban decay can be found. Realistically, we can never do anything to reverse the spread of supermarkets, but we can level the playing field. We just have to make town-centre shopping easier. And that can be achieved by getting rid of traffic wardens. Or civil enforcement officers, as they are now called.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

As I’ve said before, I never understand why people ski down a slope to a bar and then go on a lift so they can ski down the same slope again. That’s like walking to the pub on a Sunday, then going home and walking to the pub again. Madness.

— Jeremy Clarkson, And Another Thing: The World According to Clarkson: Volume 2

We waste an enormous amount of time making decisions based entirely on this fanciful notion that we like alternatives.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

Iron ore

— Jeremy Clarkson, As I Was Saying . . .: The World According to Clarkson Volume 6

Now at this point you are probably thinking: so what? There is no Ebola in the world at the moment. Oh yes there is, but despite a twenty-year, multi-million-dollar hunt nobody has been able to find where it lives. Some say the host is a bat, others say it’s a spider or a space alien. All we know is that occasionally, and for no obvious reason, someone comes out of the jungle with bleeding eyes and his stomach in a bag.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

A book needs more than beautiful sentence construction, a left-wing take and wry observation. It needs, more than anything else, a story.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

My sister once asked why it always feels, in any car, as if you’re sitting inside a man’s wash bag, and she has a point. They’re normally black and dark and enlivened only by some red stripes.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Really? (No, that’s the name of his book)

The prime minister is a Labour Tory. There’s a mosque at the end of your street and a French restaurant next door. We are neither in nor out of Europe. We are famous for our beer but we drink in wine bars. We are not a colonial power but we still have a commonwealth. We are jealous of the rich but we buy into the Hello! celebrity culture. We live in a United Kingdom that’s no longer united. We are muddled.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Only once was this not an option. A girlfriend had been pinned against the wall by a wiry, tattooed man whose speech was slurred by a combination of drink and being from Glasgow.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Well now look. The human being, and the human male in particular, is programmed to take risks. Had our ancestors spent their days sitting around in caves, not daring to go outside, we’d still be there now. Sure, we’re more civilised these days, what with our microwave ovens and our jet liners, but we’re still cavemen at heart. We still crave the rush of adrenaline, the endorphin highs and the buzz of a dopamine hit. And the only way we can unlock this medicine chest is by taking a risk. Telling us that speed kills and asking us to slow down is a bit like asking us to ignore gravity. We don’t drive fast because we’re in a hurry; we drive fast because it pushes the arousal buttons, makes us feel alive, makes us feel human. Dr Peter Marsh, from the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, says the recent rise in popularity of bungee jumping, parachuting and other extreme sports is simply man’s reaction to the safer, cotton-woolly society that’s being created.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

I tapped the drunken Scotsman on the shoulder and said, as politely as possible: ‘Excuse me.’ He whirled round, his eyes full of fire and his hands balled into steel-hard fists. But the blow never came. ‘Christ, you’re a big bastard,’ he said, and ran off. It was the proudest moment of my life.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

I can’t imagine that I would be terribly happy living in Afghanistan, either, though I dare say there is some satisfaction in going to bed thinking: ‘Well, at least I wasn’t shot today.’

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

And I’m not sure I would like it in Brazil, either, having to walk around in a thong to demonstrate that I had nothing about my person worth stealing.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

I must say, at this juncture, that I don’t like fighting. I prefer passive resistance and, if that doesn’t work, active fleeing.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Everyone was jolly cross with Michael Fish when he didn’t see the 1987 storm coming. But it turns out that he had no satellites and no computers, just a big checked jacket. Big checked jackets are no good at predicting the weather.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Then you have people who say you can tell when rain is coming because the cows are lying down. Not so. According to my new friend at the Met Office, cows lie down because they are tired.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

Flirting is the oil that lubricates the engine of ingenuity and wit

— Jeremy Clarkson

Yes, it’s true, you can only be as happy as your least happy child and they are a constant font of worry and stress.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

It won’t be a volcano that ends man’s existence on this planet. It’ll be the no-win no-fee lawyers. They are the ones who brought Europe to a halt last week. They are the ones who made a simple trip from Berlin to London into a five-country, all-day hammer blow on your licence fee. They are the ones who must be stopped.

— Jeremy Clarkson, Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

Stick to breathing. It’s the only thing you’re any good at.
(Denneth Note: I’m currently not actually all that good at breathing, managing to accidentally hold it for extended periods of time, including but not limited to while typing this, but I am eager to improve)

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

I think it’s because, in our complicated lives, we yearn only for the simple. An evening in front of the telly. A nice sit-down. A game of cards. At a drinks party, I can find myself talking to a fascinating and beautiful woman who’s just written a book about something interesting and clever. But what I yearn for is to be in the pub with my mates.

— Jeremy Clarkson, What Could Possibly Go Wrong…

More importantly, if you can’t enjoy a glass of wine on a lovely sunny day then you have removed one of the tent poles of civilization from your life. You have become no better than a cow, or a rabbit.

— Jeremy Clarkson, If You’d Just Let Me Finish

Flying means boredom. Next time you’re going away, just drive. You can leave when you want. You don’t have to sit next to a stranger. You can listen to all sorts of loud music without headphones and look at things out of the window that aren’t just clouds. Driving is sensible alternative to flying.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The Grand Tour Guide to the World

Make no mistake, Concorde was an extraordinary technological achievement. Almost certainly, one of the greatest.

— Jeremy Clarkson, The World According to Clarkson

…sips fuel like a mouse sipping sherry from a hypodermic needle.

— Jeremy Clarkson, What Could Possibly Go Wrong…

Deadlines refine the mind. They remove variables like exotic materials and processes that take too long. The closer the deadline, the more likely you’ll start thinking waaay outside the box.

— Adam Savage

Lists are how I parse and manage the world.

— Adam Savage

The only thing that differentiates you and me from a couple of fourteen year old pyromaniacs is balistic glass!

— Adam Savage

Being a geek is all about learning the inventories of things.

— Adam Savage

I’ve learned over decades of building that a deadline is a potent tool for problem-solving.

— Adam Savage

I’ve always thought something that makes you laugh, it makes you laugh because there’s a little bit of truth to it.

— Adam Savage

Of course, I love tools. I also love arranging them, to the point where I came up with a name for my organizing metric: first-order retrievability.

— Adam Savage

In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don’t start, it’s either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box.

— Adam Savage

Technology is usually there to let some process go on hidden in the background. For us on ‘MythBusters,’ we’re always trying to make the process apparent. So, we have learned to try and never rely on a technological solution when an analogue one is in front of us.

— Adam Savage

The best-case scenario is that the glass shatters in my face! How do you think that makes me feel?

— Adam Savage

Again, like I said, my life has been about being fascinated by objects and the stories that they tell, and also making them for myself, obtaining them, appreciating them and diving into them.

— Adam Savage

Jamie’s gonna go take a break now, and I am going to continue the on-going process of making a fool of myself and go ahead and try it myself.

— Adam Savage

I think LEGOs are one of the best toys ever developed.

— Adam Savage

I would have to say that looked like it hurt.

— Adam Savage

Bigger is always better.

— Adam Savage

The coolest toys don’t have to be bought; they can be built. In fact, sometimes the only way they’ll ever exist is if you make them yourself.

— Adam Savage

Remember kids, I have life insurance.

— Adam Savage

I’m not gonna shoot anyone with the pellet gun… Not unless I have to!

— Adam Savage

Firemen have the coolest toys ever!

— Adam Savage

In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a ‘failed experiment.’ Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.

— Adam Savage

The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century – it was actually mummified, skin and all – but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire.

— Adam Savage

Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That’s OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.

— Adam Savage

My advice is keep your lips away from the spinning things.

— Adam Savage

Am I about to feel really, really stupid?

— Adam Savage

Let’s blow some stuff up.

— Adam Savage

I like to work fast. I despise not having the right tool or, worse, knowing I have it but not being able to find it. It’s a pointless delay that wrecks my pace – and mood.

— Adam Savage

Jamie doesn’t like to do anything hastily, and I like to do everything incredibly hastily. So therein you have the dichotomy of our patterns.

— Adam Savage

This is the point in the show where we say, ‘Oh, what else do we have in the van that’s flammable?’

— Adam Savage

Prayer doesn’t work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I’ve paid attention. I’ve pictured what I want to happen in my life. I’ve meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn’t work for me about them.

— Adam Savage

I had saved a few hundred photos of dodo skeletons into my ‘Creative Projects’ folder – it’s a repository for my brain, everything that I could possibly be interested in. Any time I have an Internet connection, there’s a sluice of stuff moving into there, everything from beautiful rings to cockpit photos.
(Denneth note: I also have on of these folders, which functions as my background image repository on my pc. Complete lack of dodo skeletons and (non planetary) rings however)

— Adam Savage

I just had one of those ‘what the hell are we doing’ moments.

— Adam Savage

I am now standing in a mixture of cooling fluid, gasoline, and cola.

— Adam Savage

Stand back! I gotta get some rocket fuel out of the fridge!

— Adam Savage

I have some ideas on how to fix that. They’re not very good ideas, but at least they’re ideas!

— Adam Savage

That’s the show. it’s like 5 minutes of science and then 10 minutes of me hurting myself.

— Adam Savage, On his show, Mythbusters

I’m obsessed with the form of a toolbox. The idea of a portable kit that has everything you might need ignites something inside me. It’s like Batman’s utility belt.

— Adam Savage

I learned at an early age that I could make the things that I wanted. That’s a very powerful thing to realize as a kid. LEGOs were a key part of that.

— Adam Savage

There is water at the bottom of the ocean

— Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

I know exactly what I’m doing. I just don’t know what effect it’s going to have.

— Fantastic, Fallout: New Vegas

They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard.

— Fantastic, Fallout: New Vegas

Never invest more than you are willing to lose

It looked full of menace, like a shark

— Aleksandr Lazutkin, Describing the Progress spacecraft about to collide with the Mir spacestation

There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to.

— Leela, Ship Operations AI, UESC Marathon, Marathon (1994)

No stealth bombers in sight

— Snake, Metal Gear Solid

This situation does have one advantage, things can’t get any worse

— Garrett, Thief

I guess if you’re rich enough you can build any sort of madhouse to live in.

— Garrett, Thief

I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t like that.

— Garrett, Thief

This hobby isn’t cheap and when you try to make it cheap you make it even more expensive

— Saltwater Aquarium Forum

“You destroyed three quarters of a solar system!”
“Well, five sixths. But it’s not an exact science.”

— Elizabeth Weir to Rodney McKay, After Rodney destroyed about five sixths of a solar system, Stargate: Atlantis

The ultimate piece of adventuring gear – of course, a stick.

— Professor Shad

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

— Buzz Aldrin

There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

Foolish are those who fear nothing, yet claim to know everything.

Don’t despair at the clownery of the world, laugh at the circus and let the mirth that brings give you strength to burn the tent down.

People have impressive willpower when it comes to missing the point

— PatricianTV

The days are long, the years are short, cherish them while you can.

The days drag on, but the years fly by.

War is what happens when diplomacy fails

— Me

“I believe in it”
Should never be a qualifier for
“You should believe in it”

— Me

Out of sight, out of mind.

The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.

— Terry Pratchet, Pyramids

The words, ‘Go Hang a salami! Im a lasagna hog’, are a perfect palindrome down to the exclamation mark

Do not trust anyone trying to sell you a simple solution to a complex problem

— Matthew Colville

I got a gun in front of me and a warmongering nation behind me […]

— Kyle, Door Monster

We are too poor for cheap things

The past is a foreign country. They do things different there.

The direction tells you… the direction.

— Scott Manley, 2021

There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer

Sheep are born trying to die; it is a good shepherd’s job to try and stop them.

He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take.

— Aldous Huxley

Only George Lucas and wedding photographers are allowed to use wipes in editing.

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.

— William Shakespeare, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”

The con man is not interested in convincing the doubters, but only in keeping the believers on board.

To confuse the enemy, you must first confuse yourself

— Sun Tzu, The art of war

It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission

— Earl of Peterborough, in the Mordaunt Genealogies

How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real

— Jaden Smith

The difference between analog and digital circuit engineers is that the analog circuit engineers know when they are building a radio transmitter.

Copper is actually surprisingly toxic to all forms of life, which is kinda nice

— Cody Reeder

I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance

— Mike Hayes

It’s almost as if when you go up, you’re increasing in elevation

— Cody Reeder

Overconfidence can lead to accidents

Bypassing a PAL should be, as one weapons designer graphically put it, about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.

— Peter D. Zimmerman, nuclear physicist and weapons inspector

Anyone can design a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to design a bridge that barely stands

There’s two kinds of “revolutionary transport systems”: “Bikes but worse”, and “Trains but worse”.
The Shweeb has the dubious honor of being both.

Toasters, Machine Guns, it’s all just engineering.

I knew everyone would die. I just wasn’t sure what would kill us first.

— Robert Miles

Premature Optimization is the root of all evil

— Donald Knuth

Gotta start small
or big, and end in tragedy

— WTYP E14 53xx

Don’t patronize us, we’re in hell

— Richard Ayoade

Delightful news for someone who cares

— Richard Ayoade

Hang on, I have a quote for that

— Denneth Ahles

Trust, but verify

That sounds like a lot, but it’s more than that.

— Dr. Don

I never took flying lessons, but I did take a crash course!

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

— Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

If you sat a monkey down in front of a keyboard,
the first thing typed would be a UNIX command.

— Bill Lye

BSD is for people who love UNIX; Linux is for people who hate Windows.

— Anonymous

A sysadmin’s life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare.
On the other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new versions of their own innards.

— Sysadmin’s Lament

… has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.

— Winston Churchill

Failure is success if we learn from it.

— Malcolm Forbes

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

— Demosthenes, Greek orator and statesman

All generalizations are false.

Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.

Work is for people who don’t know how to fish

If you don’t like the news, go out and make some.

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!

Okay, who stopped the payment on my reality check?

It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.

According to my calculations the problem doesn’t exist.

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

Be nice to your kids. They’ll choose your nursing home.

Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.

Why is ‘abbreviation’ such a long word?

Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself.

I like you, but I wouldn’t want to see you working with sub-atomic particles.

I’m out of bed and dressed, What more do you want?

Energetic materials safety rule #1: when you think about synthesis of some organic peroxide, slap yourself really hard and think about something else

“You can tell it’s a grenade in a glass because of the way it is.”

If the sea was vodka, I would become a submarine

— Boris Yeltsin

No one is more tired than I am […]

— JFK

Vimes looked blankly into the immediate future

— Terry Pratchet, Guards, Guards!

“Although this phenomenon should have been anticipated for human space activities in weightlessness, it wasn’t.”

— G. Harry Stine, Living in Space

The plot twists and turns like a python in a sack

— The pilgrim

In critical situations, it is harder to quickly dispose or destruct a memory stick, floppy disk or compact disk than to, for example, eat a small paper sheet.

— Dirk Rijmenants

Yes, but not quite yes

— G. Harry Stine, Living in Space

I kept out of his way, worked in silence, and heartily wished him a cancer

— Max “angry dwarf” Gergel

The battle won, you switch over to teaching Aircraft Engines and Communications.
I knew nothing about aircraft engines. Fortunately neither did the cadets.

— Max Gergel, Chemist (and part-time conman)

Shutting down a reactor is not the hard part, generally¹

— 1: For exceptions, see “Chernobyl”

I am *not* moping. I am merely… moodily dejected.

— Opus Magnum, Anataeus Vaya

You lye, you are not sure; for I say, Woman, ’tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes

— Toby Guzzle, in Christopher Bullock, The Cobbler of Preston, p. 21

I’m not convinced the special wasn’t ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine.

— Nathan Rabin, On the Star Wars holiday special

Don’t pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait’ll you’re sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you’re still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.

— Dr. Leonard McCoy

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Adventure is closest when farthest from home.

We can live while we’re alive

— Dallon Weekes, 2020

I deal with entropy every day. It’s degrading.

Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to make something people actually want to buy? It’s ridiculously hard!

— Kale, Hi-Fi Rush

And like all central processing units, this thing processes centers.

— Tom Murphy VII

“I have yet to hear anyone complain about being dead.”

“1 in 20 people have been a victim of crime, which means 19 out of 20 people are criminals”

— P. Cunk

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing – and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.

— Mark Twain

“Wait, so this is normal?”
“No, but it happens a lot”

— Door Monster

For the real existential panic you’ve gotta put in work

— Jacob Geller

We are stuck between a void and a hard place and the only upside I can think of is that we will probably destroy ourselves way before we actually have to deal with any of it.

— Unknown

Numerous sentences could be constructed without employing the first letter of the English lexicon

Those all have one thing in common, other than potential lawsuits, and that is how much I want to keep them away from my head

— Gordon Freeman, Door Monster

Well, there was a spaceship, and then there was a problem, and now there’s no spaceship.

Don’t you think we should recalculate those resonance dampening factors again?

— scientist_03, Half Life

On-site personnel should be reassured that the spiders are harmless and the facility’s immense shroud of silk should be presented in a positive light as a record-breaking natural history wonder.

— Arachnologist, An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat

Shechtman said later that when he saw the first electron-diffraction data, he told himself, “There can be no such creature.”

If a site looks like it’s from 2012 and ugly as hell, they’re either at 0 users, or they’re doing 50m a year in an industry you didn’t even know existed.

Inventions are the perfection of other people’s ideas

I am amazed at your stupidity,
humbled by your bravery,
and not at all surprised by your laziness.

The only way out is through.

— Robert Frost

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

— J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

— J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit

A plum doesn’t resent the hungry man, but the farmer who planted the tree

We buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like

I can’t wait, for the weekend to begin!

— Michael Grey, The Weekend

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

— Rush, Freewill (1980)

Be careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.

— Captain Marko Ramius, Talking about the nuclear missile silos aboard the Red October

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

— George S. Patton

We’re fine, We’re fine.
We’re not fine!

— Co-Pilot

Hangman teaches us a valuable lesson. Saying the wrong thing can harm someone.

Practical, affordable fusion power will always and forever be just as close as the nearest star.

— Anonymous

If you can’t do good, at least do no harm

— Kurt Vonnegut

A man who makes no mistakes, makes nothing.

The Doctor: Looks like a spatio-temporal hyperlink.
Mickey: What’s that?
The Doctor: No idea, just made it up. Didn’t want to say “magic door”.

— Doctor Who, “The Girl in the Fireplace”

Beakers? Of colored liquids? But that means… there’s SCIENCE going on here!

— Cold Fusion Video

If you see this in the air, the good news is you can probably live long enough write your last will and testament.
If you write very quickly.

— Winchell Chung, Cherenkov Radiation

What manner of mad scientist neglects his flasks of colored liquid? Next you’ll question the Van de Graaff generator in the middle of the room — and where will *that* leave us?

— Professor Lupin Madblood, Narbonic

I love tools. I have money now so I can buy things I don’t need. I have a gear puller…
I have no idea what this is, looks GREAT on the pegboard though.

— Tim Allen

Kim, PeeJee is our friend. And if someone is worth caring about, they’re worth the effort of a long, convoluted solution that doesn’t actually address the problem. Now, I need four cellphones, ten balls of yarn and two nights worth of cigarettes. I’ve got a miracle to perform.

— Aubrey Chorde, Something*Positive

Whatever was due to happen at 00:00:00 was unlikely to be good.

— Swellhead

If I ever MUST put a digital timer on my doomsday device, I will buy one free from quantum mechanical anomalies. So many brands on the market keep perfectly good time while you’re looking at them, but whenever you turn away for a couple minutes then turn back, you find that the countdown has progressed by only a few seconds.

— Rule #216 of The Evil Overlord List

Under the nightmare of Communism, moustaches were, of course, compulsory.

— Tomorrow Stories, Alan Moore

It’s that moment of dawning comprehension I live for.

— Hobbes, Calvin and Hobbes

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.

— Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

A bad workman blames his tools, but a good workman has good tools.

Last night Chernobyl nuclear power plant fulfilled the Five Year Plan for heat energy generation in four microseconds.

— Russian joke

Stirlitz had a thought. He liked it, so he had another

— Seventeen Moments of Spring

I’ve been to many planets in the solar system, and you’d be surprised how many of them look like quarries in Wales.

— David Tennant, Never Mind the Buzzcocks

There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, written in 1835

I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.

— Margaret Thatcher

Therkla: Elan, I left the door open for you, you know.
Elan: Right, that’s why I had to go around and find another way to crash dramatically into the scene.

— The Order of the Stick

Q: How do you know that the Stasi has bugged your apartment?
A: There’s a new cabinet in it and a generator running outside.

— East German joke

[…] and if science has taught me anything, it’s that if something is spinning, it’s important.

— Gordon Frohman, Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman

“Sergeant Colon!” he snapped, his mind still buzzing with universal policemanhood, “shoot the lock off!”
The sergeant hesitated. “What, sir? With a bow and arrow, sir?”
“I mean—” Vimes hesitated. “I mean, open these gates!”

— Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ, and we know many things.

— Elric the Technomage, Babylon 5

He said: ‘To hell with moisture detectors. I’m going to build a giant robot.’ So we built a giant robot.

— Things of Interest

Spencer: Hey, come check out my automatic fish feeder! I’m making it a lot more complicated than it needs to be!
Freddie: Why?
Spencer: Because it’s fun!

— iCarly

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Al: Don’t worry, it won’t cost much… cause I’m gonna build it myself!
Bud: Mom, I’m scared.

— Married… with Children

Music, landscape gardening, architecture — there was no start to his talents.

— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

— Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Life is not a malfunction.

— Stephanie Speck

Terrible, isn’t it? On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most revolting and one being almost edible, I believe that rating this recipe would require the use of exponents.

— Invidia (on the Vord Queen’s cooking), First Lord’s Fury

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.

— William Somerset, Se7en

Soviet villager: Can it be that you have come from outer space?
Yuri Gagarin: As a matter of fact… yes.

— A brief exchange on his return from space and being mistaken for an alien.

Efficiency and progress is ours once more,
Now that we have the Neutron Bomb,
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done.

— Dead Kennedys, Kill the Poor

The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

— Tom Waits, Step Right Up

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.

— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers, hasn’t read enough books.

— Noreen, Saga

I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode.

— Teal’c, Stargate SG-1, “200”

I find that people are always jumping to conclusions about nuclear reaction. Science fact and science fiction are not the same thing, not the same thing at all.

— Dr. Jess Rogers, The Monster That Challenged the World

Thank you for activating the self destruct mechanism. This ship will detonate in three minutes. In the meantime, please enjoy some random explosions and blasts of steam. Human Resources thought it would make things more dramatic than a red light and a klaxon.

— Ratchet and Clank (2002)

Don’t examine this too closely.

— Bellisario’s Maxim

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.

— Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Dr. Hugo Sign: Lynn, what is the one and only way to prevent being killed by the explosion of a nuclear weapon?
Lynn: I dunno, don’t be there when it goes off?
Dr. Sign: Actually, that’s exactly right.

— Paul Robinson, The Gatekeeper: The Gate Contracts

“Evil sows the seeds of its own destruction”, sayeth the fortune cookie.

I’d like to quote the great William Shakespeare, but to tell you the truth, I don’t actually think he said it.

— General Donald Doyle, Red vs. Blue

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!

— President Merkin Muffley

If I build a bomb, I will simply remember which wire to cut if it has to be deactivated and make every wire red.

— Evil Overlord List Cellblock A, ‘Rule 136’

Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!

— Batman, Batman: The Movie

If my fireballs always form a mushroom cloud, time to tone it down a bit.

— #1606 of the Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG

What an odd-sized explosion.

— J.D., Scrubs, “My Unicorn”

If God is Dead, he was probably screwing with Arconite

— Breach grenade description, Heat Signature

Sam: Max, where should I put this so that it doesn’t hurt anyone we know or care about?
Max: Out the window, Sam! There’s nothing but strangers out there.

— Sam & Max Hit the Road

A reaction drive’s efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive.

— The Kzinti Lesson, Larry Niven

If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.

— Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

The self destruct is over there, next to the A-C options. I guess don’t press that either.

— Frank, Two Guys and Guy

A promising student, though just a learner,
Blew himself up with a Bunsen burner.
If only he’d had a bit more ambition,
He might have done it with nuclear fission.

Thunder’s just a noise, boys, lightning does the work.

— Chad Brock, Lightning Does The Work

Warning! All control consoles double as Firework Storage Lockers. On detonation of fireworks, please leap dramatically to the floor and feign unconsciousness.

— Instruction Manuals for the USS Enterprise

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

“Why does marketing feel like manipulation?”
“Because it is.”

If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.

— Chuck Yeager

Because of the employment of the Signetics’ proprietary Sanderson-Rabbet Channel the 25120 will provide 50% higher speed than you will obtain.

— Signetics, Fully Encoded, 9049 X N, Random Access Write-Only-Memory

I fear the worst too, Bill, because fearing the best is a complete waste of time.

— Will the Krill:, Happy Feet 2

If you put a gun to my head and said, ‘You have to come up with a story for Happy Feet 3,’ I’d say shoot me.

— George Miller

I wish you knew you were in the good old days before you left them.

— Andrew Bernard

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde

Canadians. They walk among us.

— Edwin S. Simon, Canadian Bacon

There’s a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.

— Boomer, Canadian Bacon

There is no me. I do not exist…
There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.

— Peter Sellers, The Muppet Show

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.

— Plan 9 from Outer Space

Space is the hole that we are in.

— Definition of space, Dr. James Van Allen

There’s a Zen koan. It says that if you want to find something, you have to stop looking.

— Temperance Brennan, Bones

The best offense is a good defense

The best defense is a good offense

By the time you figure out what was wrong with that, it won’t matter anymore!

— Sauron, One Ring to Rule Them All, Special Edition

If I try to think about how it works, it doesn’t work.

— Tiffany Aching, I Shall Wear Midnight

Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

— Mark Twain

There is no terminal velocity when you are falling from grace

— Me

It’s like reading russian literature, except you ate half the pages and the other half is trying to kill you.

— User Review, Pathologic (2005)

Fusion, always just 10 years away!

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Things do not change; we change.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

In the long run men only hit what they aim at.
Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

They sent men to the moon on technology less advanced than a keyfob

— AlternateHistoryHub, Talking about the Apollo engineers

Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.

— Dr. Leonard McCoy

Brevity is for the weak

This seems like as good a time as any to ask: why are we doing this?

— A Rocket To Nowhere, Idle Words

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

— Richard P. Feynman

The human race is at war. Our biggest enemy, pure and simple, is ignorance.

— John W. Young, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space

One curious thing about Apollo 11: while it was happening, no one knew for sure exactly where Eagle had actually landed!

— John W. Young, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space

In a nutshell, Columbia experienced two failed computers, one of which we restored only to have it fail again at landing. The cause of one of the failures turned out to be a sliver of solder eleven-thousandths of an inch thick that became dislodged when the thrusters were fired, shorting out the CPU board. During the postflight debriefing, I remarked about this incident, “Had we activated the backup flight software when the problem first emerged, loss of vehicle and crew would have resulted.”

— John W. Young, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space

As suggested earlier, postflight investigation found that the computer failures had been caused by particles in the GPC amplifiers. The general-purpose computers had not been given the normal zero-gravity “particle impact noise detection” tests. So, again, we were lucky that the computers did not totally fail. If GPC 2 had failed during entry and we had used the recommended procedures to fix it, we would have lost flight control of the orbiter. That would have been very bad for us.

— John W. Young, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space

Humans are actually far more likely to get taken out by an impact event or a supervolcano than we are to get killed in a crash of a commercial airliner.

— John W. Young, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space

RTLS requires continuous miracles interspersed by acts of God to be successful.

— John W. Young, on the Return to launch site Abort Mode

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

— Blaise Pascal

Brian quipped that a 140-ish character description of a paper isn’t all that novel:
It’s called the ‘title.’

— Tania Lombrozo, This Could Have Been Shorter

We live in acronyms in the government

— Dr. Brian Sheron

The price of nuclear power is eternal vigilance

Too much is almost enough

— Frederick Seidel

It’s okay to fail by succeeding too hard

— Link, (The other one)

[…], and massive means expensive.

— Rod Elliott, ESP

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler

— Albert Einstein, Quoted by Nelson Pass

Apart from the obvious requirement that you don’t make any mistakes, construction is not critical.

— Rod Elliott, ESP

“What are you doing?”
“I’m not sure yet”

[…], for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, […]

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Thousands have lived without love. Not one without water.

— W. H. Auden

Never underestimate the power of the ocean.

— Heidi Klum

Most of the applications that lumber the patent office are slightly mad.
Just like the inventors themselves.

— J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

If you don’t take risks, you can’t create a future!

— Monkey D. Luffy

I wish I had enough money to buy these. Mind you, I wouldn’t buy them, I just wish I had the money to.

— Comment on the Sennheiser Orpheus

I wish I could afford all of the hobbies I have

— Azeria

What I just described is more than a little askew with reality.

— Alec Watson, Technology Connections

Don’t ask fish for advice on catching fish, ask a fisherman

You don’t ask the fish how to catch fish, you ask a fisherman.

A majority of the post-Freud developments in psychology were made simply because people heard Freud’s explanations and hated them so much that they just had to prove him wrong.

— Unknown Psychology Professor

The cup holder holds anything as long as it’s a cup

— I Own A Car, NSP

You have left me confused, not convinced

— Me

There are things money can’t buy, but fewer, perhaps, than you’d like to believe.

— Morland Holmes, Elementary

“röntgen” and “rem” are 20th-century physics terms that mean “no trespassing.”

— xkcd 2520, Randall Munroe

You can get anywhere with a pizza box.

— Everybody Hates Chris

Y’know, Grady, some people think I’m ‘overprepared’. ‘Paranoid’. Maybe even a little ‘crazy’. But they never met any precambrian life forms, did they?

— Burt Gummer, Tremors 2: Aftershocks

Hardin once said: ‘To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.

— Hober Mallow, Foundation (1951)

The key to strategy… is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.

— Cavilo, The Vor Game

Do you know how many degrees I have?!

— Dr. McNinja, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.

— Mr. Jaggers, Great Expectations

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? He’ll see everything! He’ll see the Big Board!

— General “Buck” Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove

Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

— General Thomas S. Power, Commander-in-Chief of USAF Strategic Air Command, Charged with the delivery of the USA’s anti-city nuclear weapons to the USSR, 1957-1964

No Plot? No Problem!

— NaNoWriMo Slogan

Look, in every video game where there’s a chain of sets of rewards, it’s like: you use your gold to buy diamonds, you use your diamonds to buy gilded metal, you use your gilded metal to buy clothes…it’s always clothes. It always ends with clothes. You never trade your clothes for something, unless it’s other clothes.

— Game Grumps

The only thing between you and the vacuum of space is six feet of solid style.

— Spore, On Spaceships

Close the blast door! Close the blasted door!

— Buster Kincaid, Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space

The door dilated.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon

I don’t know what’s scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there’s actually a TERM for it.

— Giles Prentice, Broken Arrow

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

— Oscar Wilde

As we’ve learned from all films ever made, whenever you have a special skill, it will eventually save your life, regardless of how impossibly stupid it is.

— Seanbaby

Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

— Mr. Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons

Det. Mishka: You’re not FBI. Who are you?
Darien Fawkes: BWM.
Det. Mishka: Which stands for…
Bobby Hobbes: Bureau of Weights and Measures.

— The Invisible Man

You have nice manners, for a thief, and a liar.

— Smaug to Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit

If excessive ambition was the fault most commonly attributed to the middle class, failure to provide a suitable example and to care properly for their subordinates were the most common complaints against the rich. The aristocracy was widely seen as preoccupied with duels, London, adultery, foreign fashions, fox hunts, and gambling.

— Kirstin Olsen, Daily Life in Eighteenth Century England

See, only made you wait a year before explaining what was up with that.

— The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

When there is a plan, things cannot go according to it. If they do, the plan becomes a spoiler.

— How NOT to Write a Novel (Itself a book)

We pretend to work and they pretend to pay.

— Soviet workers

They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work

— Soviet workers

proof by proctological extraction.

Life will give you lemons.
Just eat them.

— Unknown

It’s Beige, the coolest kind of brown

— I Own A Car, NSP

I might not die.
Evidence: I have never died.

We are not back today

— Joe Barnard

A great first line is the collateral that grants the author a line of intellectual credit from the reader.

— Chuck Wendig

Evil is just a word. Under the skin, it’s simple pain.

— Eleanor Lamb, BioShock 2

There can be no place more desolate, despairing and awful.

— Lord Kennet, Talking about Rockall, 1971

Everything is more complicated than you think.

— Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.

— Douglas Adams

The most complicated skill is to be simple.

— Dejan Stojanovic

Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.

— Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry

There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

— E.B. White

Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

— Margaret Atwood

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.

— Carl Reiner

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.

— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.

— Tony Hillerman, Coyote Waits

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.

— Dave Barry

If Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you’d either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit.

— Paul Beatty, The Sellout

Baseball is a resplendent metaphor for life.

— Gary Hardwick, DARK TOWN REDEMPTION

The explosion would be just the right size to maximize the amount of paperwork your lab would face. If the explosion were smaller, you could potentially cover it up. If it were larger, there would be no one left in the city to submit paperwork to.

— Randall Munroe

Don’t ask for security, ask for adventure.

— Jim Rohn

You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.

— Randall Munroe

But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.

— Randall Munroe

If at first you don’t succeed, that’s one data point.

— Randall Munroe

High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they’re frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.

— Randall Munroe

You don’t use science to show you’re right, you use science to become right.

— Randall Munroe

I never trust anyone who’s more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.

— Randall Munroe

It’s weird how I am constantly surprised by the passage of time when it’s literally the most predictable thing in the Universe.

— Randall Munroe

That’s if everything goes as planned.

— Randall Munroe

As comedian Ron White said about hurricanes, “It’s not that the wind is blowing, it’s what the wind is blowing.”

— Randall Munroe

The Pauli exclusion principle keeps electrons from getting too close to each other. This effect is one of the main reasons that your laptop doesn’t fall through your lap.

— Randall Munroe

I’ve always thought that one of the the great thing about physics is that you can add more digits to any number and see what happens and nobody can stop you.

— Randall Munroe

Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

— Randall Munroe

I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you’ve ever read.

— Randall Munroe

Sometimes I mistake this for a universe that cares.

— Randall Munroe

Then the 92nd little pig built a house out of depleted uranium and the wolf was like, “dude.”

— Randall Munroe, What if

If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes?

— Anonymous, What if

If you liked it, then you should have moved a mass inside its Roche limit.

— Randall Munroe

There’s no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word “NO” scrawled over and over in charred blood.

— Randall Munroe

That’s one in 27 quinquatrigintillion.

— Randall Munroe

Do not build the seventh row.

— Randall Munroe, On building the periodic table

I can’t leave without my buddy Superfly

— Hiro, Daikatana

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it needs batteries, you probably have the wrong abstraction.

— Liskov Substitution Principle

I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.

— Emil Mazey

[…], And if it looks like a duck and talks like a duck, it should be taxed like a duck.

— Anthony Wright, head of Health Access California

If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.

— Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

— Hanlon’s razor

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

— Hitchens’s razor

There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

— Stafford Beer

The purpose of a system is what it does

— Stafford Beer

‎‎

— This quote has intentionally been left blank

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

— First Law of holes

When you stop digging, you are still in a hole.

— Second Law of holes

My postillion has been struck by lightning

I’ve written 1200 poems and at least five of ’em are good.

— Robert Shields

There are unknown unknowns

— Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense

I got it there then (8068).

— Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles, Last but not least, I cannot fail to mention my deep indebtedness to my parents, without whose early cooperation this work would never have been possible.

That feels weird, but I’ll allow it.

— Doctor Strange

Nothing comes from nothing

Zachtronics games are my favorite games to beat the first half of.

It is easy to predict the future as humans tend to excel in repeating their errors from the past.

— Dirk Rijmenants

This paper explains why they are wrong and why they don’t admit that

— Dirk Rijmenants, Is One-time Pad History?

Event’s cannot be explained by advanced VFX in a shot where crappy VFX are present.

— Captain’s Quadruple-Blade Hair Eradicator™, Captain Disillusion

Never invest in something that violates a conservation law

— John Walker

The optimal part is no part.

What you don’t have can’t break.

It’s important to recall the distinction between “grownup” and “grown up”.

— John Walker

“The time has come,” the Hacker said,
“To talk of many things:
Of plastic foam—and tuna cans—
Of chunks of lead—and string—
And how the force of gravity—
Will make the balance swing.”

In 1969, you could get LEDs in any colour you wanted, as long as they were red or infrared.

— John Walker

Sixty-seven spiders!

— John Walker

Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.

— Alex Lewyt, quoted in the New York Times, June 10th, 1955

I’ve never gotten along well with colour printers.

— John Walker

Absolute values don’t exist—only differences matter.

— John Walker

In hindsight, I don’t know why I ever thought that was a good idea

— Eoin Reardon

I feel like two children in a trench coat unconvincingly cosplaying as an adult

— Emilia

There is nothing in the universe so massively useful as a towel.

— Douglas Adams

I think the screws need to have a fine coat of snake oil to maintain the sonic properties of the power supply.

— Fred Miller (not that one)

I don’t know what they’re gonna do.
I just know it’s not gonna work.

— Richard Hammond

Sometimes I amaze even myself with my brilliance

— Jeremy Clarkson

Sometimes my genius is… its almost frightening

— Jeremy Clarkson

Although the Sputniks and Luniks did not themselves provide better cars, refrigerators, color TV sets, and homes for the peasants and laborers of the Soviet Union and her satellite states, they did evoke added inspiration for the earthbound followers of the communist way of life helping to take their minds off shortages of consumer goods. The people were spurred on to work just a little harder for the glorious motherland and to outstrip the west in the less dramatic and more basic things of life, like coal and steel production.

— Donald W. Cox, The Space Race

Clouds are for rain

— Louis Rossman

I’d ask you to think outside the box on this, but it’s obvious your box is broken.
And has schizophrenia.

— GLaDOS, Lab Rat

Now I don’t know how legitimate that fear was
I know basically nothing about electricity other than you shouldn’t put it in your mouth

— Jago Hazzard

Remember: “Unexploded Ordnance” doesn’t mean it’s safe; it means it’s taking its sweet time trying to remember when to kill somebody.
Don’t jog its memory.

Every man dies, but not every man really lives.

The missile has failed to find its target.
| Returning to base |

It’s a reality show. It’s all fake.

— Captain Disillusion

Things look more real the more terribly they’re filmed.

— Captain Disillusion

Only a guy with my nutty luck could end up being his own competition!

— Peter Parker, The Amazing Spider-Man #6

I love lag, especially when you have eight processors and no excuse!

— Kung-Fu Jesus, Let’s Play Sonic 2006 (playing the PlayStation 3 version)

There’s a word for games where the code is barely hanging together, with stupid layout, utterly unscaleable fixes and workarounds on top of workarounds.
“Shipped”

— Mike Bithell

No matter what you do, somebody will call you an idiot

— Raymond Chen

I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?

— Max Bialystock, The Producers

The big downside of the plan to infuriate an emotionally traumatized psychopath into trying to kill me was part two, where the lunatic actually did it.

— Harry Dresden, The Dresden Files: Skin Game

[…] ME crashed often and with great enthusiasm.

— TV Tropes, On Windows ME

[…] Vista was perfectly intuitive, provided you had a trained expert holding your hand every step of the way.

[…] the paragon of instability known as Internet Explorer 4.

— TV Tropes

See “Modern Production Techniques” by T. Arrieta (not yet written).

— Signetics, FULLY ENCODED, 9046 X N, RANDOM ACCESS WRITE-ONLY-MEMORY (Footnote 9)

Engines are out, steering jets are on the fritz, and someone’s fitted us with a Stuka dive-bombing siren!

— Captain Proton

If in doubt, break it.

— Adam Jensen, Deus Ex: Black Light

This is how we fix things on the Russian Space Station!

— Lev, beating a wrench against an engine, Armageddon (1998)

Hit it until it starts working

— Emergency Repair Procedure #1

Why are people born? Why do they die? And why do they spend much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

— Richard P. Feynman, Rogers Commission Report, on the Challenger disaster.

Oats. -A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

— Samuel Johnson

For every doubling of network and hardware speed, inefficiencies in software quadruples.

Ignore when people say that the length of a game’s title is not important, that a title should just convey what the game is about. They’re just jealous theirs isn’t as long.

— Atlus USA, announcing the release of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon

You don’t have to remind me, I’m all too familiar with my misguided words.

— Douglas Reynholm, The IT Crowd

Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions

— Uncertain

Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster and with more energy!

— Darynda Jones, Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

Careful with that axe, Eugene…

— Pink Floyd, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”

The concept is baffling

I think there’s more to life than 9 to 5 and eating spaghetti every day

— Joel

Virtually unbreakable unless dropped or hit

— Apple Wheel, The Onion

Did you ever try to put a broken piece of glass back together? Even if the pieces fit, you can’t make it whole again the way it was. But if you’re clever, you can still use the pieces to make other useful things. Maybe even something wonderful, like a mosaic. Well, the world broke just like glass. And everyone’s trying to put it back together like it was, but it’ll never come together in the same way.

— Moira Brown, Fallout 3

Truly one of the joys of math is constantly realizing how much more math there is

— Uncredited

My name is Greg and I’ve killed a chicken with a man!

— Greg, Door Monster

“But all [experts] agree that [XYZ is BS]!”
Have you ever spent the five seconds it would take to look up a survey of what percent of [experts] believe [XYZ is BS]? Or are you just assuming that’s true because someone on your side told you so and it seems right?

— Scott Alexander

It can be done safely. It cannot be done legally.

— Anonymous

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

[…] any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

— Arthur Dent, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Space is big.
You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

‘The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

You shouldn’t judge a book by its tutorial

— Benjamin Richard “Yahtzee” Croshaw, Zero Punctuation

Actual human life was invested, to make this worse.

— Linus

Q: How did they make a transistor that small?
A: With great difficulty

I know it when I see it

— Potter Stewart

A good man lives a life of truth, but a great man knows when to hide it.

— Anonymous

There is light in the darkness

— Joshua Graham, Fallout: New Vegas

Am I dreaming?
Has the world gone mad? Or have I?

The more you learn, the more you know.
The more you know, the more you forget.
The more you forget, the less you know.
So why bother to learn.

— Stephen Hawking

These next tests require cooperation.
Consequently, they have never been solved by a human.
That’s where you come in.
You don’t know pride; you don’t know fear.
You don’t know anything.
You’ll be perfect.

— GLaDOS, Portal 2

Revolvers are the katana’s of guns

— Liquid Snake, Revolving Revolver Revolvering, Revolver Revolver

We’re going over there, and bringing the most lethal killing machine ever devised. We’re capable of launching more firepower than has ever been released in the history of war. For one purpose alone: to keep our country safe. We constitute the front line and the last line of defense.

— Captain Ramsey, Crimson Tide

I’m going to go out to the site and test the nuclear device which will launch the rocket [because it might fail]. If you see a Hiroshima Mushroom you do not come to the site; instead, turn around and leave immediately.

— Robert A. Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.

— Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love

Only a few select personality types, outlined in the attached report, have any desire to re-activate the device. Most notable are the D-class sociopaths who show similar amusement when presented with a big red button that says ‘kill everything.’

— SCP Foundation, SCP-804

To repress one’s feelings only makes them stronger.

— Yu Shu Lien, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

For many newcomers, PC stands for “Pain and Confusion”

— CBS Evening News, 1995

Cars are terrible things.

— Esther, JD

A war with no battles, no monuments… only casualties.

— Marko Ramius, Commanding officer, Russian ballistic missile submarine Red October.

“Underpromise, overdeliver”
I am doing at least half of that.

— Me

No, [this isn’t more government control,] this is a government body stepping in to reduce corporate control.

— Linus

The quickest way to a man’s heart is through the fourth and fifth ribs.

— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

At a comma, stop a little; at a semicolon, somewhat more.

— Richard Hodges, The English Primrose (1644)

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue […] The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.

— Gabe Newell

The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them

The key to photorealism is camera shake

— Hideo Kojima

I fear, people will misquote me in future

— Albert Einstein

A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.

— Dave Barry

While I would never wish a man dead, I have read several obituaries with great pleasure

— Mark Twain

I don’t like these valid comebacks you’re throwing at me

— Ron, It’s a glitchy chair

Famed pool game inventor ‘Marco Polo’ […]

— Bob

Shhh, listen. Do you smell something?

— Ray Stanz

These chips, are fries
This queue, a line
This tap, a faucet
Wardrobe, a closet
Vacation, holiday
Underground, subway
Chemist, a drugstore
Autumn, is fall
A garden, a yard
You see now? It’s not hard

— MikeJ, English to American

We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled.

— Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable.

— Matilda Wormwood, Matilda

My first thought when I heard that was, ‘I am so going to quote that out of context’, but on reflection it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in context, either.

— Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

[…], you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first

— Marvin, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying “Blood…blood…blood…blood…”

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

“So the hours are pretty good then?” he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.”

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Inflammable means flammable?! What a country!

— Dr. Nick, The Simpsons

Nature abhors a vacuum and also anything that is not a crab

— XKCD 2314: Carcinization, Randall Munroe

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

— Hofstadter’s Law

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely

— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO, DL

Things tend to arrive loudly and disappear quietly

— Mat, Techmoan

God is always doing Geometry.

— Plato

He is like an Astronomer who, with the help of Code, finds the most wonderful Stars.

— Chopin

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

— Dr. Emmett Brown

You go from being biology to being physics

— Scott Manley, On Crush Depth

[…], The bridge quickly proved that being cheap to build had come at a cost.

— Matt Parker, Humble Pi

The sleekness of the design made it very aerodynamic.
As in, the air made it dynamic.

— Matt Parker, Humble Pi

The fewer words a magic sword has, the more dangerous it is.
You don’t want to end up at the wrong end of Dark King Grutemores Edge of Annihilation but you definitely don’t want to go near the Bongler.

— Bongler’s Law

There really is no service that you can provide that someone, somewhere will not take advantage of.

Enough is enough! I’ve had enough of these [monkey-fighting] snakes on this [Monday-to-Friday] plane!

— Samuel L. Jackson, Snakes On A Plane (TV edit)

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it [on Goodreads].

— Bertrand Russell

Never has a generation so thoroughly documented itself doing so little.

Top Secret. Burn before reading.

— Monday starts on Saturday

“That’s enough of that, that goat’s been properly inventoried!”
“A goat, inventorised?”
“It’s not a goat! It’s one of our employees!
“Then let it show me it’s papers!”

— Monday starts on Saturday

Chernobyl: the peaceful atom in every home

The author has considered asking for advice […], but has rejected this idea on the grounds of being a coward

— The Author

Blue is not a colour, its a state of mind

— Unnamed Collegue

In the fight between Microsoft and Nintendo, I root for the fight.

— Pablo F M

I need something stronger than vodka, like reinforced concrete, or titanium

— Me

In matters of days, Sex went on to sell more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and remains the best and fastest-selling coffee table book.

— Wikipedia, Sex

That made Cavell liable to capital punishment under German military law, which was duly implemented by a German firing squad.

— Wikipedia, Netherlands in World War I

Devs keep trying to simulate reality but forget reality is horribly unbalanced.

Your brain is like a muscle, it wasn’t made for mathematics

— Me

It has continually amazed researchers to discover that human beings are more rugged than the devices they travel in. Studies of human acceleration and jolt tolerances have shown that, in nearly all cases, properly restrained and supported people have withstood crash forces only to be crushed by the vehicle structure collapsing on them. This has led to the re-design of automobiles as well as airplanes. And it’s one area where aerospace research has paid off in everyone’s lives.

— G. Harry Stine, Living in Space

The Maginot Line might have reflected a feeling of security for those living behind it, but it could not inspire them as did the image of a Finnish soldier hurling a bottle at a tank.

— William Trotter, Frozen Hell

Its one weakness was a certain degree of over-manufacture in its moving parts, tolerances too fine and too numerous, so that it sometimes froze in severe cold, precisely the kind of weather it would be used in. When that happened, it was sometimes possible to reactivate a frozen Lahti by the simple expedient of urinating on it.

— description of the Finnish Lahti submachinegun, Frozen Hell

To check if a hole in the ground is dangerous, throw a bird into it
If you hear it hit the bottom, its filled with poisonous gas

— Me

I like to predict both sides so I always come out half right

— Me

The War On Christmas will only end when Christmas ends its illegal occupation of November!

The Red Army possesses all the advantages over the armies of other states in its ability to operate in the harsh conditions of the winter period. …

— Red Army Manual of Winter Combat, 1939 Edition

Science always triumphs!

— Weston Lesko, Fallout 3

When an article says “some scientists think” then remember this:
I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth.
I could, it turns out, get in in there, but i hadn’t given sufficient thought to the reverse operation.

— John Kennedy, Scientist

Polonium has few applications, and those are related to its radioactivity: heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, sources of neutrons and alpha particles, and poison.

— Wikipedia, Polonium

To load a Nagant revolver in the battle you need to
1. Open the valve of the special loading window located on the right side of the revolver frame;
2. Turn the head of the ramrod located under the barrel of the revolver, release its lock and turn the ramrod so that it stands opposite the opening of the charging chamber of the drum;
3. With a sharp blow of the ramrod, knock the empty casing out of the drum;
4. Rotating the drum, line up the next charging chamber with the ramrod;
5. Knock out the next empty casing and repeat these actions until all the chambers are empty;
6. Return the ramrod to its original position under the barrel of the revolver and fix it;
7. Insert seven new cartridges into the empty charging chambers, one by one, one by one, through the loading window;
8. Close the loading window;
9. Pay attention to the German infantry squad, which has been watching your actions with interest all this time;
10. Boldly take lead in the chest from the German infantry squad.

The Wiener process has applications throughout the mathematical sciences.

— Wikipedia, Wiener process

Shutting down a reactor is not the hard part, generally¹

— 1: For exceptions, see “Chernobyl”

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

— Hélder Câmara

People say the KGB was cold and uncaring, but you’ve got to give them credit for being great listeners.

Less a shot in the dark, more a duel at dawn

— Me

Rocket Science is hard, yes, but the real hard part is Rocket Engineering

I’m guessing that the mind which finished this project is no worse off than the one which decided to undertake it in the first place.

— Josh

And for my next trick, I’ll make the island of Elugelab disappear!

— Ivy Mike

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

— Henry Ford

Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!

— Yuri Gagarin

They encountered a series of problems but solved each one.

— Red Atom, On irradiating potatos

With irradiation of meat products, the salesperson or butcher in the store would no longer be able to sell hamburger like that offered to me with the claim, “It’s not spoiled. It only smells. When it’s spoiled, it’s green.”

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

Artsimovich joked that plasma physics was not science, because the subject of natural science was objects created by nature and the subject of plasma physics was objects created by the experimentalist.

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

The method of satisfying your own curiosity at the expense of the government.

— Lev Andreyevich Artsimovich, Definition of Science

Remember, an experimentalist, in contrast to a theoretician, will be mistaken only once, and then they will no longer believe him.

— Lev Andreyevich Artsimovich

Shouldn’t every republic have its own 2,000-kilowatt reactor and 150-megaelectronvolt accelerator?

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

Other RBMKs were promised, but fortunately they were never built.

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

If anyone wants a hole in the ground, nuclear explosives can make big holes.

— Edward Teller, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb

Unfortunately, their return reflects only the resilience of storks, not a resolution to the legacy of atomic-powered communism.

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

[…] But Skvirskii’s concerns were the tip of the reactor pile.

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

At least the emergency safety system at Ignalina works well: One of the turbogenerators of the second block was tripped when a crow’s nest built on a tower shorted out a 330-kilowatt power line.
The fried bird and the tower fell to the ground.

— Paul Josephson, Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

7

— General Robert McBrayer

Seven

— General Robert McBrayer

The world will surely teach one; if nothing else, than to walk slowly

— Finnish Proverb

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

— Not actually Mark Twain

Only when the last tree is cut;
only when the last river is polluted;
only when the last fish is caught;
only then will they realize that you cannot eat money

— Cree Indian Proverb

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I’m not scared,
I’m petrified!

— Fallout Shelter, Mike & Bernie Winters (1961)

The covers of this book are too far apart.

— Ambrose Bierce

From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite). Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels’ autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books.

— Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel

Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

— Bob Dylan, My Back Pages

…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself… [In] all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

— The Iron Law of Bureaucracy, as formulated by Jerry Pournelle

Pick up that can.
Now put it in the trash can.

— Civil Protection, Half Life 2

It’s not DNS
There’s no way it’s DNS
It was DNS

— SSBroski

Logs told us it was DNS
It felt like DNS, it had to be DNS
It wasn’t DNS

— Laurent Bernaille & Elijah Andrews, Datadog

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

You can do anything you want, except for the things you can’t do

— M

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

— Plutarch

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lighted.

— Plutarch

Common sense is not so common.

— Voltaire

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

— Aristotle

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

— Stephen Hawking

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

— Henry Ford

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

— Ernest Hemingway

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.

— Roy H. Williams

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

— Socrates

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

— Unknown

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

— Salvador Dali

I had the ambition to go not only farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go.

— James Cook

All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone

— Blaise Pascal

I’m going to turn into a citrus product is what I’m gonna do.

— John W. Young, 128 hours, 19 minutes, 4 seconds into Apollo 16

Well, it’s back to the drawing boards—or wherever geologists go

— T. K. Mattingly, Apollo 16 astronaut, April 1972

Time is relentless

— Dick Gordon

There were probably as many emotions in that room as there were people

— Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon

You reap what you sow, Artyom. Force answers force, war breeds war, and death only brings death. To break this vicious circle one must do more than just act without any thought or doubt

— Khan, Metro 2033

You can’t hide from the future.

— Khan, Metro 2033

Wicked phenomenon, yes? But, you know, it’s not any more “evil” than, say… fire. It all depends on your point of view. Try to get a better understanding of things before you make your judgement.

— Khan, Metro 2033

I know this tunnel, and it knows me.

— Khan, Metro 2033

Everything went great right up to the explosion.

— Andy Weir, The Martian

Code unto others as you would have other code unto you

I am not certain, so I shall say no more

— Gandalf

The world is complex, and you should be skeptical of simple narratives.

— Alec Watson, Technology Connections

I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their backs

— Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring

‘Last version was better,’ says Floyd. ‘More bugs. Bugs make game fun.’

— Planetfall

People who weren’t around in the Twenties when radio exploded can’t know what it meant, this milestone for mankind. Suddenly, with radio, there was instant human communication. No longer were our homes isolated and lonely and silent. The world came into our homes for the first time. Music came pouring in. Laughter came in. News came in.
The world shrank, with radio.

—  Red Barber, Sportscaster

Fear exists in the one place you can never escape; your mind

My cuts, short or long, don’t go wrong!

— Strider, The Fellowship of the Ring

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

There were two problems with Genie, mostly of a philosophical nature: there was nothing to use it against, and the troops were scared to death of it

— James Maheffey on the “Genie” Air-to-Air Rocket Propelled Nuclear Bomb, Atomic Accidents

You need money so you don’t have to think about money.

— Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

Sometimes I ask myself, what the hell are we all running around for, anyway? To make money? But what the hell do we need money for if all we do is run around making it?

— Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

Don’t trust atoms

— They make up everything

It’s not the end of the world at all…It’s only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency, you must start with this one thing: the very definition of ‘emergency’ is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference (1957)

‘There are not many road signs in Russia, you know.’ He laughed. ‘If you don’t know where the road goes, you shouldn’t be on it.’

— Arkady Renko

Humans have intelligence without wisdom. It’s what makes them misunderstand trivial things.

— Tieria Erde

In the moment of crisis, the wise build bridges and the foolish build dams.

— Nigeran proverb

Expect disappointment and you’ll never be disappointed

With enthusiasm, you can achieve everything. Enthusiasm is the glare of your eyes, the speed of gait, the fortress of handshake, the insurmountable tide of energy and will to implement your ideas. Enthusiasm is the cornerstone of all progress! Only with it can success. Without him, you only have the possibilities.

— Henry Ford

Who dares, wins

— SAS Motto

Don’t use seven words when four will do.

— Rusty, Ocean’s Eleven

The purpose of a first draft is not to be good, its to be written.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

— John Dufresne

There’s only one thing that can save a man from madness and that’s uncertainty.

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

The number of places in paradise is limited; only in hell is entry open to all.

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

Do you know the parable about the frog in the cream? Two frogs landed in a pail of cream. One, thinking rationally, understood straight away that there was no point in resistance and that you can’t deceive destiny. But then what if there’s an afterlife – why bother jumping around, entertaining false hopes in vain? He crossed his legs and sank to the bottom. The second, the fool, was probably an atheist. And she started to flop around. It would seem that she had no reason to flail about if everything was predestined. But she flopped around and flopped around anyway . . . Meanwhile, the cream turned to butter. And she crawled out. We honour the memory of this second frog’s friend, eternally damned for the sake of progress and rational thought.

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

Russians have the unique ability to look into two abysses at once

— Unknown

According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy invisibility is so hard to do that it’s easier to just to not be there instead.

When you can’t find something, take a note of the first place you looked for it. When you DO find it, or replace it, put it in that place where you looked first! Chances are likely next time you need it, you’ll look in that place first, and there it will be!

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

— The Call of Cthulhu

“I believe we are alone in the universe”
“So there is no one else out there?”
“No, but they are alone as well”

Life after death, is just that; life.

I have fallen and I choose not get up

— Jonathan Aryan Jafari

You can offend with a word, but with a dictionary you can kill

At my company, we had a C program which took three hours to load some data to a database.
A modern Java program has been written to replace it. That takes six hours.

— Unknown

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

— Charles Bukowski

I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.

— Robin Williams

Is it better for a man to have chosen propane than to have butane imposed upon him?

— Hank Hill

“We must move at once!”
“In which direction?”

I, of course, used a time machine to ‘get the idea’ of Unseen University from Hogwarts; I don’t know what Paul [Kidby, the illustrator] used in this case. Obviously he must have used something.

— Terry Pratchett, on the similarities between Discworld and Harry Potter

If it wasn’t for the fun and money, I really don’t know why I’d bother.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I shudder if the majority of people look at my brush work and say it is pretty, for then I know it is ordinary and I have failed. If they say they do not understand it, or even that it is ugly, I am happy, for I have succeeded.

— An anonymous artist

Chance favors the prepared mind

— Louis Pasteur

You have the fullest half glass I’ve ever seen

— Fronteer Soldier, Titanfall 2

“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes.

— James Morrow

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

— Carl Sagan

The world is shattered. The wise are mourning, the fools are joking.
Oh, what does it matter? The wash needs ironing and the fire needs stoking.

what you hear depends on where you’re sitting

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there’s nothing like irrelevant detail to keep you afloat.

— John le Carré, The Russia House

There’s so many board games with so many different titles, but I feel like they could all have the same title: ‘Which One Of My Friends Is A Competitive Prick?’

— Demetri Martin

God is on the side of who has the best artillery.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Studying category theory is like eating your vegetables.

— Author, and meaning, unknown

One can think of equivalence of categories as “isomorphism up to isomorphism”

— Awodey

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

— Immanuel Kant

‘Rope!’ muttered Sam. ‘I knew I’d want it, if I hadn’t got it!’

— J.R.R Tolkien

History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.

— Mark Twain, Alleged

Any job worth doing is worth doing twice

— Robert Dunn’s Dad

Grog, which contains one or more of the following: kerosene, propylene glycerole, artificial sweeteners, sulphuric acid, rum, acetone, red dye #2, scumm, axle grease, battery acid, and/or pepperoni.

— Grog, The Secret of Monkey Island

Don’t look now, but there’s a humongous fungus among us!

— Red Green, The Red Green Show

Never drink any drink with a paper umbrella in it,
never drink any drink with a humorous name,
and never drink any drink that changes colour when the last ingredient goes in.

— Mustrum Ridcully, Hogfather

I started to walk down the street when I heard a voice saying: ‘Good evening, Mr. Dowd.’ I turned, and there was this big white rabbit leaning against a lamp-post. Well, I thought nothing of that, because when you’ve lived in a town as long as I’ve lived in this one, you get used to the fact that everybody knows your name.

— Elwood P. Dowd, Harvey

— Gordon Freeman, Half Life

— Gordon Freeman, Half Life 2

It’s also important to be able to control your bodily functions. You never know when a long demo is about to begin, so make sure you’re prepared to sit in front of the monitor for a long time if necessary. If you’re feeling drowsy, you should get some sleep.

— Master Miller, Metal Gear Solid

my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die

— Old Orion mining song on the side effects of Old Janx Spirit, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

It has a funny taste. You can’t put your finger on it, but if you had to describe it you would say it has the flavor of INTENSE PAIN.

— Problem Sleuth

We’ll live underground. Use bacon for clothes.

— Sam Sparks, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

A one-time pad isn’t a cryptosystem: it’s a state of mind.

— Marcus Ranum

As a practical person, I’ve observed that one-time pads are theoretically unbreakable, but practically very weak. By contrast, conventional ciphers are theoretically breakable, but practically strong.

— Steve Bellovin

Do not irritate druids. They have ways.

— Marcus Ranum

History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.

— Ecclesiastes 1:9, The Bible

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’
I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

— Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Fifteen million dollars is not money. It’s a motive with a universal adapter on it.

— Joe Sarno, The Way of the Gun

No one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged.

— Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?

— Reverend William Archibald Spooner

An end is in sight to the severe weather shortage.

— Ian Macaskill, BBC weather

…the wind shining, and the sun blowing gently across the fields.

— Ray Laurence

Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.

— Brooke Shields

It just as easily could have gone the other way.

— Don Zimmer, Chicago Cubs manager, on his team’s 4-4 record.

Our offense is like the pythagorean theorem: There is no answer!

— Shaquille O’Neal, basketball player for the L.A. Lakers

People think we make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don’t realize that most of us only make $500,000.

— Pete Incavigila, baseball player for the Texas Rangers.

The wind always seems to blow against catchers when they are running.

— Joe Garagiola

I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.

— Winston Bennet, former University of Kentucky basketball forward.

Me and George and Billy are two of a kind.

— Micky Rivers, Texas Rangers outfielder, on his warm relationship with Yankee owner Steinbrenner and manager Billy Martin.

Wait a minute! I’m not interested in agriculture. I want the military stuff.

— Senator William Scott, during a briefing in which officials began telling him about missile silos.

I’m not indecisive. Am I indecisive?

— Jim Scheibel, mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota.

A man could not be in two places at the same time unless he were a bird.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee.

The streets are safe in Philadelphia — it’s only the people who make them unsafe.

— Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia.

The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy.

— Howard Pyle, aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, commenting on the unemployment situation in Detroit.

When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight.

— John Major

Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.

— Alf Landon, in America, during a speech in his presidential campaign against FDR.

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.

— Senator S. I. Hayakawa

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

— Charles de Gaulle, President of France

A zebra does not change its spots.

— Al Gore

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.

— Gerald Ford

If Lincoln was alive today, he’d roll over in his grave.

— Gerald Ford

A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.

— Jean Chretien

Will the highways on the Internet become more few?

— George W. Bush

If crime went down 100%, it would still be fifty times higher than it should be.

— Councilman John Bowman, commenting on the high crime rate in Washington, D.C.

There are two kinds of truth. There are real truths, and there are made up truths.

— Marion Barry, on his arrest for drug use.

Outside of the killings, [Washington] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

— Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, D.C.

Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.

— Popular Mechanics, 1949

The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.

— Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.

— Lee DeForest, Inventor

Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.

— William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.

— Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869

That Professor Goddard with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react–to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.

— 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work., The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.

Ours has been the first, and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality.

— Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.

— Albert Einstein, 1932

The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.

— Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.

There will never be a bigger plane built.

— A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.

Do you have anything good to read

— asked of Librarian, The response was, “No, ma’am. I’m afraid we have 75,000 books, and they’re all duds.”

However, things are not always as simple as they seem. Is all this precipitation being monitored? And if it is, why? And if why, then by whom? To all these questions, the answer is yes.

— a New Zealand paper.

‘There’s a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,’ says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.

— From an IGN game review.

Seasonal weather for the time of year.

— Radio weather report.

If England are going to win this match, they’re going to have to score a goal.

— Grandstand, BBC1

When they complained about our escorting their “Blackjack” bombers I just wanted to say that we just wanted to be there for search and rescue if they needed it.

— Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense, January 2009

I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

— Evil Overlord List, Item #34

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

— Evil Overlord List, Item #86

I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

— Narbonic

I think I know from where your problems stem.
Would you, could you, RTFM?

— The Internet Oracle

Casey: I’m installing ‘Cinema-OS’, the operating system used in the movies.
Andy: Any downsides?
Casey: Yeah, it can’t show any font under 72 point.

— Casey and Andy #163

Begin Operation: Something-Thingy!

— Evil Blah, The Demented Cartoon Movie

[…] If you ask three archaeologists what long barrows were used for, you’ll probably get four different opinions.

— Tom Scott

It is doubtless true, as somebody pointed out, that a yoke of oxen would be driven, not with a whip but with a goad; but the lash of a whip can be heard on the air, whereas it is useless to ask the studio-effects-man to stand by making a noise like an ox-goad.

— Dorothy L. Sayers, introduction to The Man Born to Be King

The bubble-top canopy rose automatically and Tom dived inside, searching frantically amongst hundreds of levers, switches and analogue dials for the start button.

— Attack of the 50-Ft. Half-Klingon

“What’s the difference between a bug and a feature?”
“Marketing.”

— Unknown

And when everyone’s a critic, no one will be

— Syndrome

Hope is not a strategy

— Rick Page

I have a mouse named Gerbil and a gerbil named Mouse.
The night that I named them it was dark in the house.

— Songdrops, “The Name of My Frog”

A film about three men walking through the wooded territory, two of whom are mostly calm, and the third is constantly afraid of something.

— A popular recap of unknown origin, Сталкер (1979)

My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

— President Ronald Wilson Reagan, August 11, 1984

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.

— Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

The most complicated skill is to be simple.

— Dejan Stojanovic

The list is endless, but I shall end it here.

— Rod Elliott, On the different types of knobs

Excuse my lack of punctuality, I had to rework my walk because it wasn’t silly enough anymore.

The best way to communicate from one human being to another is through story.

— Donald Knuth

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

— Donald Knuth, Remark to correspondent

You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.

— Nikola Telsa

With Great power comes a great reconstruction of a city.

The problem with loyalty to a cause. Is that the cause will always betray you.

— Lockdown

In retrospect, it seems completely logical that once a weapon is invented it will be used. But we forget the blindness and obsfucation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when the most destructive weapons were regarded as walls of protection, and when the horror of Armageddon was seen as a deterrent no sane society would risk. But the nations were not sane – rational, composed, aware, but not sane…the Death, when it came, was completely earnest and open. Every weapon was used as it had been designed to be used.

— Greg Bear, Eon

The photo team confirmed the frog is real and was captured in a single frame by one of the remote cameras used to photograph the launch. The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain.

— Nasa, on the frog incident

Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.

— General Beringer, Wargames (1983)

I don’t believe that any system is totally secure.

— David, Wargames (1983)

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

— WOPR, on Nuclear War, Wargames (1983)

I wouldn’t trust this overgrown pile of microchips any further than I can throw it.

— General Beringer, Wargames (1983)

I loved it when you nuked Las Vegas. Suitably biblical ending to the place, don’t you think?

— Falken, Wargames (1983)

Jennifer: He wasn’t very old.
David: No, he was pretty old. He was 41.
Jennifer: Oh yeah? Oh, that’s old.

— Wargames (1983)

Russia and the United States are at war. Missiles have been fired by both sides. Washington and Moscow are in flames. Details on these and other stories in just a moment, but first, this word about hair care.

— George Carlin

It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever

— David St Hubbins

[…] if there is only a 1% chance the planet is heading toward a truly major disaster and delay means passing a point of no return, inaction now is foolhardy.

— Warren Buffett

One day I’ll be dead and THEN you’ll all be sorry.

— Terry Pratchett, 28 Nov 1992

Everything I know about geography, I learnt playing Empire, Diplomacy, and Risk.

— John Fouhy

Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.

— Sir Frederick Banting, Inventor of insulin

Even my errors aim to please.

Piracy is sea themed

See appendix A for a proof that Winston Churchill was a carrot.

— Charles Seife, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

The Internet is, like, a pipe full of Soup

— Sarah Marshall

I’m not right, but I’m not THAT wrong

— Hank Green

When I said “Blame the dice”, I did not literally mean to ascribe agency to the polyhedron

— Ian

There is no ‘i’ in ‘communism’

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

— Grey’s law

[…] you have 5 minutes of experience repeated hundreds of times

— Anonymous Server Admin

Nothing is impossible. Impossible just takes a bit longer

The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer

— US Army Slogan, Alleged

It is a corvette when you ask the Treasury for money, a frigate when it is launched, a destroyer when it enters service, a cruiser when it goes to war, but only a corvette if it gets sunk.

The only dumb question is one that is not asked.

Everyone has a book inside them and, in most cases, that’s exactly where it should remain.

— Christopher Hitchens

An hour with a book would have brought to your mind,
The secret that took the whole year to find;
The facts that you learned at enormous expense,
Were all on a library shelf to commence.

— Audels New Electric Library, Frank D. Graham, B.S., M.S., M.E., E.E.

Don’t be angry at lazy people
They have done nothing

I don’t make things complicated, they do that all by themselves

We are the bork.
Your software bugs will be added to our own.
Resistance is futile.

…Machiavelli noted that ‘..there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things…’ At videodisc, I believe these words had special significance…

— Dr. Jay J. Brandinger, Vice President, RCA SelectaVision Videodisc Operations, June 27, 1986.

If you are alone in the desert and see vultures perched above you, your first thought is never, ‘Oh thank God, the vultures are coming to help.’

— John Oliver, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

0xBAADF00D acknowledges the problem and offers no solution.

— SLUGBUG

If I have been able to see further, it is because I have been surrounded by midgets

— Murray Gell-Man

They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past,
but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!

— The Lorax (1972)

Filing Cabinet.

— Dr. Lucien Sanchez

The goals of the [space] program are not scientific goals; they are political,

— David Lilienthal, first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1963

[…], but the problem of waste handling was eliminated by eliminating elimination.

— Michael G. Del Duca

Well, it is so often the way, sir, too late one thinks of what one should have said. Sir Thomas More, for instance — burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism — must have been kicking himself, as the flames licked higher, that it never occurred to him to say, ‘I recant my Catholicism.’

— Edmund E. Blackadder, Blackadder the Third

I am not a wit — I am a comedy writer. A wit thinks of something funny immediately; a comedy writer thinks of something very funny two hours later.

— Douglas Adams

You have perhaps heard the phrase that hell is other people? In time, you will learn that it is wrong.

— Death, Small Gods

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

— Jorge Luis Borges

Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.

— Alan Parsons

Walking tanks must exist somewhere for there to be such attention to detail like this in mech sim.

— IGN Steel Battalion review

The only dumb question is one that is not asked.

[…] What followed was one of the most epic face-offs in DRAM history.

— IEEE Spectrum, 25 Microchips that shook the world

Ratings are for transistors – tubes have guidelines

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand

Just in case it doesn’t work, at this point I declared it a work of art.

— mitxela, “A Silent PC”

And when I turned it on – wonder of all wonders – it didn’t explode!

— mitxela, “A Silent PC”

I’m not sure what our application here even is, but that’s beside the point.

— mitxela, DDC OLED

The first step-down module met with a tragic end involving several amps going where they shouldn’t.

— mitxela, Ghetto Barrel Jack

Stupid, silly, pointless – it seems these are my buzzwords.

— mitxela, Steampunk DDC OLED

It has a look.
I can’t quite name its look, but it certainly has one.

— mitxela, Midi Interceptor

I would not say that it is finished, only that this round is over.

— mitxela, Midi Interceptor

Made In A Castle With Better Equipment

— Can, Monster Movie (1969)

It was the perfect high end audio product: Exotic, inefficient, expensive, unavailable, and toxic.

— Nelson Pass, “The Ionic Man”

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

— Mae West

I kind of like it in here; it’s private.

— Jamie Hyneman, on the unexpected perks of safety equipment

Are the radio-waves from objects in space any threat to us?
No, they are extremely weak. The total energy collected by radio astronomers over the history of radio astronomy amounts to about the energy required for a mosquito to make one push-up!

— Dr. John Simonetti, of the Department of Physics at Virginia Tech

The only person you should fail is yourself.

— Zachariah Trench, Control

I’m not happy that it’s all our fault, but at least it’s not all my fault

Has anybody seen my cloak of hiding?

Change is bad because everything is currently perfect

A tip is just a complaint that read a book on positive thinking

The chaos army seems suspiciously well-organised

Fashions fade, style is eternal.

— Yves Saint-Laurent

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

— Winston Churchill

earlier investigation was done with more depth, more rigour, and, most importantly, more expensive equipment

— The Annals of Improbable Research, Replying to a British Medical Journal study on the differences between apples and oranges

Knowing is half the battle. The other half is the battle

— Sean Schemmel

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

— John Steinbeck

Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing

— William Dudley

I’m Gabe Newell

— Gabe Newell

Caution! Under no circumstances confuse the mesh with the interleave operator, except under confusing circumstances!

— INTERCAL Reference Manual

Exhaustive tests in our advertising department have shown that the 606 will give 50 per cent more output than you will obtain

— Umac 606 Phantasatron Technical Datasheet

I didn’t “crash my bike”, it just got some free, custom engraving!

— Me

Anecdotal evidence is only evidence of an anecdote

— Ryan Kluftinger

If it ain’t broke, take it apart and find out why

I hope we didn’t need that

— Me, Vacuuming

The cold war era is known for its myriad of acronyms

— Far Beyond the Moon: A History of Life Support Systems in the Space Age

One really shouldn’t use wheelbarrow per square banana units, only metric.

It was an algae space race.

— William Oswald

Everything is different in a closed system.

— Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

The lunar project is not the whole space program.

— Senator Stuart Symington, 1964

A kind of “algae space race” developed.

— William Oswald

The ecologists and engineers couldn’t insult each other if they tried.
The languages they spoke, their methods, and their thought processes were too different.

— Mark Nelson, 2018

That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what those beings may be.

— Percival Lowell, Mars and its canals, 1906

Human kind will not remain forever confined to Earth.
In pursuit of light and space it will, timidly at first, probe the limits of the atmosphere and later extend its control across the entire solar system.

— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

One day we *shall* fly to Mars.

— Friedrich Tsander, 1932

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

— Dan Quayle

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

— Dan Quayle

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

— Dan Quayle

I deserve respect for the things I did not do.

— Dan Quayle

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

— Dan Quayle

The future will be better tomorrow.

— Dan Quayle

Bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.

— Dan Quayle

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

— Dan Quayle

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out, and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

— Dan Quayle

[It’s] time for the human race to enter the solar system.

— Dan Quayle

I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.

— Dan Quayle

The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in this world is play piano and sing on the radio. This isn’t work, it’s play – and I’m getting paid for it!

— Two Ton Baker

One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions

— Wernher Von Braun

The fact that geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers.
But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

— Carl Sagan

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world!

— John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

— William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act III, Sc. III

This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force.

— Dorothy Parker

As a chemist, I must exude some odor that serves as a reverse pheromone

— Max Gergel, Bromide Chemist

There’s no news like bad news

— Elliot Carver, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

The difference between genius and insanity is measured only by success

— Bruce Feirstein

Long story short, I am never welcome in Albania ever again.

— Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

The phonograph makes it possible for a man, who has already rested long in the grave, once again to raise his voice and greet the present.

— Helmuth von Moltke

I love to think, and I don’t want to screw up the machine

— Richard Phillips Feynman, On why he was afraid to take drugs

We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing we discovered was the Earth.

— Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts

— Bertrand Russell

Marketing is an engineering problem

— Honda, Alleged

A twin engine aircraft gets you to the scene of the accident more quickly

— Pilot’s Aphorism

The world’s ultimate weapon runs on water, everything else runs on fuel

— Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-4, Army Water Planning Guide

There is a replica of this Model in the Museum of Traffic and Technology in Berlin.
Back then it didn’t function well, and in that regard the replica is very reliable — it also doesn’t work well.

— Konrad Zuse

Maybe I’m right, maybe they are, but as far as I’m concerned they’re entitled to their incorrect opinions.

— Neal Firth, The Soul of a New Machine

The appreciation of pleasing decay is an important one because it is so often neglected.

If it never failed, there wouldn’t be any point in making it work, would there?

— Ed Rasala, The Soul of a New Machine

Danger makes life interesting, but anxiety gets tiring after a while

— Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine

A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things.
They are, in short, a perfect match.

— Bill Bryson

But it clearly is the only right way.
The fact that everybody else does it some other way only means that they are wrong.

— Linus Torvalds

Seximal, God’s gift to man

— Tucker Ervin, Hackaday

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

— Zork I

They say great science is built on the shoulders of giants.
Not here.
At Aperture, we do all our science from scratch. No hand holding.

— Cave Johnson

Pillar one: Science without results is just witchcraft.
Pillar two: Get results or you’re fired.
Pillar three: if you suspect a coworker of bein’ a witch, report them immediately. I cannot stress that enough. Witchcraft will not be tolerated.

— Cave Johnson, Aperture Science “Pillars of Science”

You saved science!

— GLaDOS, Portal 2

Peace in the world, or the world in pieces!

— Sam Hinton, Old Man Atom

What is to give light must endure burning.

— Victor Frankl

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.

— E.B. White

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog.
Nobody laughs and the frog dies.

Nothing in life is certain, except Death, Taxes, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just like… your opinion, man.

— Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, The Big Lebowski

How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?

— The Guardian, concerning The Silmarillion

I wisely started with a map and made the story fit… the other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities.

— J. R. R. Tolkien

If given a choice of options, always take the crazy one. Nobody ever plans for crazy.

— Mr. Welch, answering a question about role playing at Con-Jour II

The more you learn, the more you forget what you didn’t know

— mitxela

There are some who call me…. Tim?

— Tim the Enchanter, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I was tempted to jump trough a window but we were three stories off the ground, and I was not sure where I had parked my car.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

I am a thespian, easily moved to tears, as for example when facing a woman who has taken off her clothes and then, overcome by conscience, puts them on again.
Or, as in the present case, facing the awful problem of making methyl iodide, my old nemesis.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

I changed wives three times and sailboats six, averaging two boats per wife.
Marriage and divorce did not dent my love for women; when a boat died I loved its successor.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

He plunged trough a window, shattering the glass.
Fortunately Betty’s party was on the first floor. We rushed to the window, and he was a small speck, blocks away, weaving in a mad run trough the falling snow.
Someone said, “He doesn’t have a coat.”

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

I was scared, as they say in the vernacular, —-less.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

I recall a letter from the celebrated photochemist, Gary Griffin, a professor at Louisiana State University.
“Dear Max” it said, “Because of our desperation, we ordered 10 grams of cis-stilbene at a perfectly awful price of $35.
My graduate student on examining the bottle, found immersed therein a very large spider.
We have filtered the solution, which is fairly good cis-stilbene, obtaining 8.2 grams.
The spider has been dried and weighs 1.8 grams.
We are returning the spider by U.P.S. and ask that you replace with authentic cis-stilbene.”

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

Promptly the chemicals, the flask, all the apparatus on the table, the table, the room, and part of the ceiling flew in a thousand directions.
Ed had been in the doorway, holding an empty cup, which he planned to fill with coffee in an adjoining building.
He sailed in a parabolic arc, the cup tightly held. I watched him go by. He never moved a muscle of his face.
He landed in a sitting position in our one grassy area.
Our Sikh, Davinder Singh, hurried over and filled the outstretched cup, receiving an almost inaudible, “Thank you” from Hunter.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

Time was running out; I was due to leave for Isreal on a consulting trip the following week.
I sent up prayers to Yahweh, patron of all those who are in trouble, and planned to invoke him again the following week from Tel Aviv, where the lines are shorter.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

I saw an old geezer smoking a curved pipe and asked him how long it had been raining.
He looked at me, removed the pipe, yawned, and in excellent English said, “Forty days.”

— Max Gergel, Arriving in Yugoslavia

Women. They are a complete mystery.

— Stephen Hawking

An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made.

— Shakespeare Quote of the Day

Ik at geen ontbijt,
Want ik had geen honger en geen tijd
Toch nam ik nog een koekje toe
Anders werd ik weer zo moe

— Denneth

We watched the Apollo 11 flight on the television at TsNIImash. After the happy conclusion of the lunar expedition, Tyulin proposed stopping by the director’s office.
There, over a glass of cognac, he said: “This is all Chertok’s fault. In 1945 he came up with a scheme to snatch von Braun from the Americans and didn’t manage to pull it off.”
Chertok replied bitterly: “And it’s a very good thing that Vasya Kharchev and I failed in that undertaking.
Von Braun would have sat for some time in our country uselessly on an island, and then he would have been sent to the GDR, where as a former Nazi he wouldn’t have been cleared to work anywhere.
And so with the help of the Americans, he fulfilled not only his own dream, but also that of all mankind.”

— Boris Chertok

You can’t just close this place like a macaroni factory.

— Russian Worker, Tomsk-7 Plutonium Production Combine

A letter from the Rostov-on-Don University student physics club to Rutherford provoked quite an outburst. Having confused the English and Russian words for “nucleus” and “cannon balls,” they informed the great man that he had been elected an honorary member of their club “for having proven that atoms have balls.” Rutherford angrily demanded an explanation from Kapitsa, who happened to be in the Cambridge laboratory at that time and who calmed Rutherford down.

— Red Atom: Russias Nuclear Power Program From Stalin To Today

We’re scientists, not magicians,

Predictability has always been the sidekick I don’t talk about.

— Batman, Dark Knight III: The Master Race

The American delegation made another informative visit, this time bringing the big guns, Dr. Edward Teller, the brilliant Hungarian theoretician and Mother of the H-bomb* […]

* Inside nuclear engineering, Dr. Teller is considered to be the mother of the H-bomb and not the father because he “took it to full term.”

— Atomic Accidents

I heard that [Buran] was adopted mainly due to insistence from Ustinov, who had made the following argument: if our scientists and engineers do not see any specific use of this technology now, we should not forget that the Americans are very pragmatic and very smart. Since they have invested a tremendous amount of money in such a project, they can obviously see some useful scenarios that are still unseen from Soviet eyes. The Soviet Union should develop such a technology, so that it won’t be taken by surprise in the future

— Roald Sagdeyev

The tail grants the turtle a better bass performance.

— mitxela, Turtle

However, in the end there is a limit to more and more safety systems.
Eventually they are counterproductive in that they simply provide more ways the system could fail.

— Charles E. Till and Yoon Il Chang, Plentiful Energy – The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor

Alternative Universes tend to have more Zeppelins.

— Ken Hite, Ken Hite’s Law

About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

— W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance, 1879

The thing about quotes on the internet is you can not confirm their validity

— Abraham Lincoln

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

— Rich Kulawiec

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

— William of Ockham

Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity

— William of Ockham, Ockhams Razor

We don’t ask that you stay within the bounds of physics, but at least follow the rules you freaking made up.

— Cracked, “8 Classic Movies That Got Away With Gaping Plot Holes”

When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.

— Leo Burnett

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

— G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles 9, 1909

The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.

— Winston S. Churchill

If you enjoy what you do you’ll never work another day in your life.

— Confucius

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

— Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

— Manfred Eigen

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

— George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The way we do find out about this proton, the first kind of experiments that we’ve been making, is to tear the electron off the atom and accelerate the proton faster and faster, and let it plow into a mass of atoms, into a piece of ordinary matter, hoping it’ll hit one of the other protons in the, say, hydrogen gas. And then see what happens, what comes out.
It would be like trying to find out what a watch is made out of and how the mechanism works by the expedient of smashing two watches together and seeing what kinds of gear wheels fly out.

— Richard P. Feynman, The Hunting of the Quark

It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil-which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

— Richard P. Feynman

Life is a verb, not a noun.

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Human Work

When asked by a group of theologians what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of His creation, Haldane is said to have answered, “An inordinate fondness for beetles”

— J. B. S. Haldane

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier — when it’s spelled with a lower case letter.

— Richard W. Hamming

Three minutes’ thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

— A. E. Housman

A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

— A. E. Housman

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

— John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

The principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been—and will continue to be—applications created by that technology.

— Herbert Kroemer, Nobel Lecture, 8 December 2000, Stockholm

Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it’s you.

— Edwin H. Land, [unverified]

a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story.

— C. S. Lewis

Critics who treat “adult” as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

— C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”, 1952

Science: (n.) The attempt by subroutines in an operating system to deduce the source code, and write the instruction manual.

— Dave Logan

Time is that great gift of nature which keeps everything from happening at once.

— C. J. Overbeck

time is a device to prevent everything happening at once, space is a device to prevent it all happening in Cambridge

— Dharma Kumar, Paraphrasing Joan Robinson

‘Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

— Alexander Pope

… Say what you like. Plutonium may give you grief for thousands of years, but arsenic is forever.

— Terry Pratchett

There’s a truism that the road to Hell is often paved with good intentions. The corollary is that evil is best known not by its motives but by its methods.

— Eric S. Raymond

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.

— Bertrand Russell, The ABC of Relativity

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

— Ernest Rutherford

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

— George Bernard Shaw

Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

— George Bernard Shaw

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

— George Bernard Shaw

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

Walk! Not bloody likely.

— George Bernard Shaw

We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

— George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it.

— George Bernard Shaw

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream of things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

— George Bernard Shaw

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity,
and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity.

— Jonathan Swift, Quoted by Lewis Fry Richardson in ‘Weather Prediction by Numerical Process’

While you are asleep you are dead; and whether you stay dead an hour or a billion years the time to you is the same.

— Mark Twain

Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

— Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

— Mark Twain

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number – there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.

— John von Neumann, Various Techniques Used in Connection With Random Digits.

In mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.

— John von Neumann

The introduction of numbers as coordinates … is an act of violence whose only practical vindication is the special calculatory manageability of the ordinary number continuum with its four basic operations.

— Hermann Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science, 1949

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

— Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 1933

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

— Eugene Wigner, Title of a paper

THE VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department.

— Frank Zappa

Reality is a crutch for those who can’t cope with Science Fiction

— Gene Wolfe

I never fully understood [the label of ‘escapist’] till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, ‘What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?’ and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

— C. S. Lewis, “On Science Fiction”

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions

— Mark Twain

Home is where the books are

— Richard Burton

We could have built a NERVA engine by the end of this decade.
The development was moving very well when Congress decided to cancel the program.
Incidentally, more money is annually spent on lipsticks in New York State than NERVA was costing, and any medium sized state has more annual sales of liquor than NERVA cost over it’s lifetime.
It’s nice that they don’t waste their time on frivolities like space.

Editorials aside, NERVA would have been the key to manned exploration of the solar system, and it’s reasonable to assume that somebody, someday, will use it for that.

— Jerry Pournelle, Ph.D., Those Pesky Belters and Their Torchships, 1974

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

— Fran Lebowitz

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

— Aristotle

A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.

— Oliver Reed

I’ve been studying theoretical physics, although at this point I guess it’s just physics.

Someday, we’ll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.

When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly.

— McDonnell Douglas Law of Aeronautics

it is often wiser to choose the wrong way so as to expedite subsequent revision.

— H.B. Fyfe

There’s always one more bug.

— Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology

Any program will expand to fill available memory.

— Microsoft’s Law

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

— Shaw’s Principle

Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

— Wyszkowski’s Second Law

It works better if you plug it in.

— Sattinger’s Law

When all else fails, read the instructions.

— Cahn’s Axiom

If you mess with a thing long enough, it’ll break.

— Schmidt’s Law

The solution to the problem changes the problem.

— Peer’s Law

When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.

— Rule of Accuracy

Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

— First Law of Laboratory Work

He who has the gold, makes the rules.

— The Golden Rule

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

— Thomas la Mance, Lennon’s Law

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

— Clarke’s First Law

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

— Clarke’s Second Law

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Clarke’s Third Law

[People] will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

— Katz’s Law

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

— Winston Churchill, Alleged

All general statements are false.

— The Ultimate Law

If you wait, it will go away.

— Hellrung’s Law

Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

— Ducharme’s Precept

Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

— First Postulate of Isomorphism

In every organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on.
… This person must be fired.

— Conway’s Law

The real world is a special case.

— Horngren’s Observation

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

— Stewart’s Law of Retroaction

Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.

— Hawkin’s Theory of Progress

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

— Hanlon’s Razor

Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

— Allen’s Law

What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts, not the facts themselves.

— Cohen’s Law

People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

— Benjamin Franklin, Comins’ Law

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

— Goldwyn’s Law of Contracts.

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

— Sevareid’s Law

Everything costs more and takes longer.

— Pournelle’s Law of Costs and Schedules

The most delicate component will be dropped.

— Rosenfield’s Regret

After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.

— de la Lastra’s Law

After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.

— de la Lastra’s Corollary

When you’re adding up committees
there’s a useful rule of thumb:
That talents make a difference,
and follies make a sum.

— Piet Hein, The Arithmetic of Cooperation

Snow is not neutral.

— Frunze Military Academy Maxim

Cement is a mighty binding material. With cement we’re going to have a great building-up of the republic.
We are cement, Comrades: the working class. Let us keep that in mind. We’ve played the fool long enough; now we’ve got to start real work.

— From Fyodor Gladkov’s Cement

You want weapons?
We’re in a library!
Books!
The best weapons in the world!

— Doctor Who

He’s just, like, this guy, you know?

— Zaphod Beeblebrox

a love supreme

— John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (1965)

No, it didn’t “fix” anything. It just shifted the brokenness one space to the right.

— jasonwryan, Arch Linux BBS

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

— Carl Sagan

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, and it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

— Edward R Murrow, On the Television

Well, supposing at this point, that Mozart, or one of that crowd, […]

— Tom Lehrer, Clementine

90% of what is considered “impossible” is, in fact, possible.
The other 10% will become possible with the passage of time & technology.

— Hideo Kojima

Looking back, I am thankful that I didn’t go into the film industry.

— Hideo Kojima

I won’t make games with senseless violence. There has to be a reason for it, such as war.

— Hideo Kojima

Ladders are boring

— direwolf, 2022

Ladders are boring, elevators are cool

— direwolf, 2022

Everyone who uses a computer frequently has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe.

— John D. Clark, Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

Acting logically is at odds with acting human

This is my Grandfather’s ax.
This is my Grandfather’s ax.
My Father replaced the handle.
I replaced the ax-head.
This is my Grandfather’s ax.

Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for NorthWest Gas said “We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It’s possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house.”

— The Daily Telegraph, allegedly

At the height of the gale, the harbourmaster radioed a coastguard on the spot and asked him to estimate the wind speed. He replied that he was sorry, but he didn’t have a gauge. However, if it was any help, the wind had just blown his Land Rover off the cliff.

— Aberdeen Evening Express, allegedly

A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, “this sort of thing is all too common”

— The Times, alleged

Winners don’t use drugs

— William S. Sessions, Director, FBI

No, that’s not a hand you see on the shelf below.
It’s a foot.

— Mr. Spatula Tzar

“That is how I want to die”
“What, muttering about meat pies?”
“No, late”

Glulx games are almost always shipped in the Blorb format.

— Wikipedia, Blorb

Chemists, I observe, are thrifty and try to get as much yield as they can from a reaction, and they readily absorb food.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

“We’re down to a half gallon,” [he] croaked. “All we have left is the smell.”
He handed me a hammer, which we normally use to tighten bungs, and pointed to his cranium.
I was sorely tempted to use it on my own.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

People think they want technology, when what they actually want is stuff that works

— Douglas Adams

Prepared for the worst, I telephoned my chemical plant in the United States.
In a surprisingly short time, the call went trough.
The plant was surviving, and business was moderately good. There had been no fires, no serious accidents, no other emergencies.
Relieved, I hung up and was strolling back to the dinner table when the telephone operator called me to the desk and apologetically presented a bill that equaled half the cost of the trip to Yugoslavia.
I developed apoplexy.
I now knew the awful truth. The reason for the cheap fares to Yugoslavia is to lure businessmen away from their plants, and the telephone system supports the country.
My distaff side told me without sympathy that this would teach me not to call home.

— Max Gergel, The Ageless Gergel

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

— Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay

Code is like humor. When you have to explain it, it’s bad.

— Cory House

… I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity …

— Tom Lehrer

[…], I’d like to humbly describe how to completely fix this forever.

— Oliver Milne, RPS

A free opinion is worth what you paid for it

Free advice is worth what you paid for it

A sound chip is less like a soundcard, and more like an oscillator open to suggestions

— Me

And so He brought forth a carrot, and said: “Behold this, for it is a carrot.” and all about him knew that it was so, for it was orange with a green top.

— Rowan Atkinson

The Pinnacle of Online Entertainment.

— CV-11, on CV-11

I didn’t “Oversleep”
I prefer the term “Involuntary resting”

— Me

The universe is, and we are.

Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it’s still dark.

— Unknown

89% of magic tricks are not magic.
Technically, they are sorcery.

— Fact Core, Portal 2

Evolution is a change from a no-howish untalkaboutable all-alikeness by continuous sticktogetherations and somethingelsifications.

— William James, 1880

No meme is an island

— Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

So, basically, saying that this game should be burned is an insult to fire.

— RPGnet review of F.A.T.A.L

History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.

— Ecclesiastes 1:9, The Bible

It is now generally agreed among evolutionary theorists that sex is a crane

— Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Of all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit.

— Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead

I’ve played right into the hands of a dastardly villain, whom I’ve never stood a chance against.
Who is this incarnation of chaos?
Why it is none other than me.

— Davin Massie, Incarnation of Chaos

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action

— Ian Flemming, Goldfinger

I can shove rocket-science up your ass

— Iolana

PowerPoint makes us stupid

— Gen. James N. Mattis, United States Marine Corps

Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid

— John Wayne

Life is so beautiful our instinct is going to be to protect it, but our imperative, you have to remember, is to appreciate it.

— Ryan Kluftinger, FortNine

Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, literally out of sight, topped with warheads and ready to go, awaiting the right electrical signal. They are a collective death wish, barely suppressed. Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial – and they work.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

The Redstone often carried a 4-megaton warhead but couldn’t fly more than 175 miles. The combination of a short range and a powerful thermonuclear weapon was unfortunate. Launched from NATO bases in West Germany, Redstone missiles would destroy a fair amount of West Germany.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

No great monument has been built to honor those who served during the Cold War, who risked their lives and sometimes lost them in the name of freedom. It was ordinary men and women, not just diplomats and statesmen, who helped to avert a nuclear holocaust. Their courage and their sacrifices should be remembered.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

American tanks were sent to Checkpoint Charlie as a show of strength. Soviet tanks appeared there at about five in the evening on the twenty-seventh. The British soon deployed two antitank guns to support the Americans, while all the French troops in West Berlin remained safely in their barracks.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

Sergeant Paul Ramoneda, a twenty-eight-year-old baker with the Ninth Food Service Squadron, was one of the first to reach the bomber.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control

[…] cybersecurity was mostly an afterthought.

— Nicolas M. Chaillan, Chief Software Officer of the U.S. Air Force

Anyone who has been shot in the leg and tried to walk immediately afterward was not hired as the technical consultant on this movie.

— Roger Ebert, on Gunmen (1994)

I thought I was a moral person.
I was wrong.

— Steam review of Crusader Kings II

Life is short.

— Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

In order not to check in late,
I’ve had to lose a lot of weight,
From swimming through a fair-sized flood
And wading through the goddam mud.

I’ve lost my rubbers and my shoes
Perpetually I have the blues
My spirits tumble with a thud
Because of all this goddam mud.

It’s in my system so that when
I cut my finger now and then
Instead of bleeding just plain blood
Out pours a stream of goddam mud.

— Anonymous Tennessee Eastman employee, The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Although it is a widely held belief that human beings are mortal, the relevant statistics do not, in fact, support this theory. Of all humans ever born, one-third were prehistoric, one-third lived since history began and one-third are still alive. Consequently, mortality has only occurred in two cases out of three, a statistic that by no means suggests that it will always be true. So it appears that there is no significant evidence that any of us will ever die.

— Feedback, New Scientist, 26 April 1997

… one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.

— Robert Firth

But that, you see, my dear Kermit, would be altogether impossible.

— Peter Sellers, The Muppet Show, February 1978

But one of Arnold’s commanders was too cocky and nonchalant. He once removed a dummy weapon from a storage bunker in broad daylight, put it into the back of his pickup truck, covered it with a tarp, drove right past security, and disassembled it in front of his girlfriend. Arnold thought the move was stupid and irresponsible, as well as a major breach of security. Inside the bunker, the dummy weapons were stored beside the real ones.

— Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Political satire became redundant when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.

— Tom Lehrer, On why he stopped writing and recording

Wilkinson hath bored us several cylinders that doth not err to the thickness of an old shilling in no part.

— Matthew Boulton, Watt’s business partner, 1776

I’m tone dumb, which is worse than being tone deaf because you know you’re singing out of tune but can’t do anything about it.

— Paul Clarke, rec.arts.sf.written

If atheism is a faith, then not playing chess is a hobby.

— New Scientist, 2589:21, 3 February 2007

It was a target rich environment.

— Flt Lt Dave Morgan, Sea Harrier pilot, “Decisive Weapons — Harrier”, BBC2, 20 October 1997 on the 10:1 odds against them in the Falkland’s War

It’s now almost dawn on Mars.

— BBC News, 6 July 1997 reporting on the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover

Astrologers: aggressive frauds who talk crystal balls.

— Jonathan Meades, “Even Further Abroad”, BBC2, 5 March 1997

Mud thrown is ground lost.

— Teletext letters page, 23 November 1995

VM users do it virtually all the time

— Car Sticker

“Will my programs run on the 3081?”
“Yes.”
“Oh good. They never ran on the 370.”

Time moves vertically upwards.

— Heard during a seminar in 1982, as the speaker indicated the y -axis on a graph

Mount Tumbledown has fallen.

— Falklands crisis, 1982

About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

— W. S. Gilbert, The Pirates of Penzance, 1879

Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice.

— Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to PI as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of PI change.

— FORTRAN manual for Xerox computers

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

— Edsger W. Dijkstra, How do we tell truths that might hurt? EWD498, 1975

There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the implementation.

— Bertrand Meyer

The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9

— Erwin Dieterich

A language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language.

— New Hacker’s Dictionary, on C

BASIC is to computer languages what Roman numerals are to arithmetic

— Unknown

APL, in which you can write a program to simulate shuffling a deck of cards and then dealing them out to several players in four characters, none of which appear on a standard keyboard.

— David Given

If you put a million monkeys at a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program. The rest of them will write Perl programs.

— Anonymous

Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.

— The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

— G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles 9, 1909

If you enjoy what you do you’ll never work another day in your life.

— Confucius (551-479 BCE)

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p4, 1871

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

— ‘New England Reformers’, lecture to the Society, 3 March 1844

My work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

— Neil Armstrong

Photographs are monuments

— Peter van Agtmael

Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We used to make steel!

— David Mitchell

Since this is an exercise divorced from reality, the usual vehicle was FORTRAN.

— Ken Thompson, Reflections on Trusting Trust

Big shots tried to hold it back

Fools tried to wish it away

The hopeful depend on a world without end

Whatever the hopeless may say

— Rush, Manhattan Project

Actually, FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular.

— Ken Thompson, Reflections on Trusting Trust

The press must learn that misguided use of a computer is no more amazing than drunk driving of an automobile.

— Ken Thompson, Reflections on Trusting Trust

Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a person

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The person who can read but doesn’t, isn’t better of than the person who can’t read

— Mark Twain

Our lives can change in two ways: trough the people we meet and the books we read

— Harvey Mackay

Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.

— Thomas à Kempis

After more than forty years, we have had no third world war, and the balance of nuclear terror … may have helped to prevent one. But I am not at all sure of this; back then, in those long-gone years, the question didn’t even arise. What most troubles me now is the instability of the balance, the extreme peril of the current situation, the appalling waste of the arms race … Each of us has a responsibility to think about this in global terms, with tolerance, trust, and candor, free from ideological dogmatism, parochial interests, or national egotism.

— Andrei Sakharov

Fortunately, the future is unpredictable and also – because of quantum effects – uncertain.

— Andrei Sakharov

Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode.
Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys.

— Vince Coleman, Train Dispatcher

The global importance of the Middle East is that it keeps the Far East and the Near East from encroaching on each other.

— Dan Quayle

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

— Dan Quayle

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

— Dan Quayle

If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.

— Dan Quayle

If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check.

— Dan Quayle, Inventer of the Spell Check (alleged)

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

— Dan Quayle

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.

— Dan Quayle

Bobby Knight told me this: ‘There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.’ In other words a good offense wins.

— Dan Quayle

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

— Dan Quayle

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

— Dan Quayle

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

— Dan Quayle

We’re going to have the best-educated American people in the world.

— Dan Quayle

If you give a person a fish, they’ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime.

— Dan Quayle

It’s a very good historical book about history.

— Dan Quayle

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

— Dan Quayle

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument… an instrument of power.
An instrument that establishes the agenda.

— Dan Quayle

I want to be Robin to Bush’s Batman.

— Dan Quayle

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around.
They never vote for us.

— Dan Quayle

It shows ‘us vs. them’, and I’m on the ‘us’ side.

— Dan Quayle

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.

— Dan Quayle

They need help, and we have helped, and we are here to help. And we are helping, and we’re going to continue to help.

— Dan Quayle

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

— Dan Quayle

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is ‘to be prepared’.

— Dan Quayle

I just don’t believe in the basic concept that someone should make their whole career in public service.

— Dan Quayle

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

— Dan Quayle

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

— Dan Quayle

I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.

— Dan Quayle

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

— Dan Quayle

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

— Dan Quayle

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

— Dan Quayle

Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.

— Dan Quayle

Great American sport. Horseshoes is a very great game. I love it.

— Dan Quayle

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

— Dan Quayle

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the magnitude of the earthquake.

— Dan Quayle

Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.

— Dan Quayle

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in ‘Red Storm Rising’.

— Dan Quayle

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

— Dan Quayle

What you guys want, I’m for.

— Dan Quayle

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

— Dan Quayle

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

— Dan Quayle

The President is going to benefit from me reporting directly to him when I arrive.

— Dan Quayle

Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less.

— Dan Quayle

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

— Dan Quayle

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

— Dan Quayle

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

— Dan Quayle

Man is the only kind of varmint that sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

— John Steinbeck

It’s your privilege to disagree, but that doesn’t make you right and me wrong.

Finding the meaning of life is easy.
Simply get a dictionary, go to the ‘L’ section, and find the world ‘life.’

— Oscar Wilde

Its an old story, but it’s true –
a man can be in love with another man and survive; a man can be in love with a woman and come trough without any material injury, but when a man is in love with himself he’s in a helluva fix.

— The Tuscaloosa News, Alabama, October 17, 1921

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

(Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.)

— Thomas à Kempis

A programmer is a person who fixes a problem that you don’t know you have, in a way you don’t understand

— Unknown

I feel like our focus has strayed from the deathtrap

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

— Albert Einstein

Everything’s connected but nothing’s working

Early is on time

I slept longer than I had anticipated

— Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan, The Day Today

I arrived insufficiently early

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

— Franklin D. Rosevelt

There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.

Functional programming combines the flexibility and power of abstract mathematics with the intuitive clarity of abstract mathematics.

— xkcd 1270

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts

— Alan Watts

You should not be afraid of someone who has a library and reads many books; you should fear someone who has only one book; and he considers it sacred, but he has never read it.

— Friederich Nietzsche

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing

— Benjamin Franklin

Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? He’ll see everything! He’ll see the Big Board!

— General “Buck” Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove

Einstein would roll over in his grave. Not only does god play dice, the dice are loaded.

— Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Looking God In The Eye”

I’m not a paranoid, deranged millionaire, goddammit, I’m a billionaire.

— Howard Hughes

Life’s true gift is the capacity to enjoy enjoyment.

— Lwaxana Troi, ST TNG

The worst mistake is to have the best ladder and the wrong wall.

— Donald Rumsfeld

It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of symmetry

— Philip Anderson, Nobel Prize Physics

Hier moest ik van de website-bouwer een motto zetten, maar ik begrijp gewoon niet waarom.

— Benjamin Blokhuis

I’ve lived all my life in this weird wonderland;
I keep buying things that I don’t understand
‘Cause they promise me miracles, magic, and hope
But, somehow, it always turns out to be soap

— Allan Sherman, Chim Chim Cheree (Chim Chiminey, Chim Chimney, Chim Chim Cher-ee)

Are we being good ancestors?

— Jonas Salk, Virologist

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

— Constitutional Peasant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana

Unwarranted euphoria and misplaced confidence are international phenomena

— John D. Clark, Ignition!

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

— Bertrand Russell

It’s not safe to hope for the best without preparing for the worst

— 1947, Year of division

‘Obvious’ is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

— E.T. Bell

Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.

— E.T. Bell

Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth

— E.T. Bell

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

— E.T. Bell

I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.

— E.T. Bell

Time makes fools of us all.
Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.

— E.T. Bell

The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future.

— E.T. Bell

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof.
Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

— E.T. Bell

The longer mathematics lives the more abstract – and therefore, possibly also the more practical – it becomes.

— E.T. Bell

The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

— E.T. Bell

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog

— Mark Twain

Not homosexuality, but extrapolation, is the most characteristic vice in which our age has imitated classic Greece.

— E.T. Bell

Science seldom makes a grand attack on a whole army of difficulties; it divides and conquers.

— E.T. Bell

Theory and experiment are the twin crutches by which science hobbles forward.

— E.T. Bell

The first assumption amounts to a statement that all reaction rates are zero, the second to a statement that they are infinite, and both assumptions are demonstrably false.

— John D. Clark, Ignition!

“Like all science,” said the hook-nosed one, “our work deals with human happiness.”

— Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

It’s amazing how kids think alike…even when separated by 30 years.

— Ken Hollis

Our youth love luxury. They have bad manners and contempt for their elders and love idle chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants not the servants of the household. They contradict their parents, chatter before company. gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

— Attributed to Socrates, c.450 BCE

People like to believe they control their life in a logical and orderly fashion. Reality is that major life defining events like marriage and jobs are almost purely random events.

— Ken Hollis

I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.

— Professor John Frink

Good design is as little design as possible.

— Dieter Rams

Why buy it, when you can slap it together yourself with duct tape and saliva?

— Dr. Ophelia Turner, 1971

In technical terms, it is the worst book I have ever read. In comedy terms, it is the best book I have ever read.

— Anonymous, Finish what you start

You can’t control things with positive thoughts.

— Wayne, For all mankind

Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

— Benjamin Disraeli, 1870

Just you wait.

— Davila Romanvs

Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it.

— Harry S. Truman, after the bombing of Hiroshima

Every pint bottle should contain a quart.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

Half the lies our opponents tell about us are untrue.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity? For what has posterity ever done for us?

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

P.S. If you do not receive this, of course it must have been miscarried; therefore I beg you to write and let me know.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

At present there are such goings-on that everything is at a standstill.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

The cup of Ireland’s misery has been overflowing for centuries and is not yet half full.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all national calamities is generally followed by one greater.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

A quart bottle should hold a quart.

— Sir Boyle Roche, eighteenth century Member of Parliament from Tralee

It’s not unlike a long-range kebab.

— Javelin description, Dungeons of Dredmor

Not all writing is worth reading. Just because someone can put words on a page doesn’t mean they are worth reading or add value.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

One can never read too little of bad or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Like all science, our work deal’s with human happiness

— Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everyone with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained and ceased to strive for further improvements.

— Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 1887

If science fiction is exploring how technology affects people’s lives, then one of the best SF movies ever made was Singin’ in the Rain

— David E. Romm

I never fully understood [the label of ‘escapist’] till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, ‘What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?’ and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

— C. S. Lewis, “On Science Fiction”

I want my money back. And my two hours. And my initial mental state

— William December Starr, rec.arts.sf.written

You will find that insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. They are so unsure of the validity of their game rules that they say ‘Everyone. Must. Play.’

— Alan Watts

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

— Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

— Alan Watts

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

— Alan Watts, Pool Cleaner

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

— Alan Watts

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

— Alan Watts

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

— Alan Watts

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

— Albert Einstein

Horses have four legs and still they stumble.

— Arkady Strugatsky, The Tale of the Troika

There is nothing more flexible than a legal parameter.
You can delineate one, but you can’t overstep one.

— Arkady Strugatsky, The Tale of the Troika

Strange department, this. Their motto was: “The comprehension of Infinity requires infinite time.” I did not argue with that, but then they derived an unexpected conclusion from it: Therefore work or not, it´s all the same.”
In the interests of not increasing the entropy of the universe, they did not work.

— Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

If you want to be a grocer, a general, a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment.

That’s the problem. He’s a brilliant lunatic, and you can’t tell which way he’ll jump. Like his game, he’s impossible to analyze — you can’t predict him, dissect him… which of course means he’s not a lunatic at all.

— Anatoly Sergievsky, Chess

With ABC deleting dynamite gags from cartoons, do you find that your children are using explosives less frequently?

— Mark LoPresti

A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

— William de Worde

I do not talk like that! The way I communicate is much different. I do not reiterate, repeat, reinstate the same thing over and over again. I am clear, concise, to the point!

— Mojo Jojo, The Powerpuff Girls (1998)

Oh dear, now we are in a pickle.

— Arthur Wilson, Technician at Windscale Piles, 1957

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Like all science, our work deals with human happiness.

— Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

The first step of any project is to grossly underestimate its complexity and difficulty

— Nicoll Hunt

If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.

— H.G. Wells

Now, occasionally you’re going to get stuck. It’s nothing to get upset about. Don’t go hurling your controller at the cat, because it might throw something back, and it’ll only escalate, and then, well…

— Stephen Fry, LittleBigPlanet (2008)

a love supreme

— John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (1965)

There is a problem with ingesting a significant amount of radium

— James Mahaffey, Atomic Accidents

War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.

— Niko Bellic

What hath God wrought

— First message sent by telegram, May 24, 1844

I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.

— Tom Lehrer

You had to admire these folk singers, it takes courage to get up in a coffee house or a student auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on.

— Tom Lehrer

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

— Tom Lehrer

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

— Tom Lehrer

Life is like a sewer – you get out of it what you put into it.

— Tom Lehrer

If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while.

— Tom Lehrer

On my income tax 1040 it says ‘Check this box if you are blind.’ I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.

— Tom Lehrer

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

— Tom Lehrer

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

— Tom Lehrer

I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.

— Tom Lehrer

It was Richard Le Gallienne, I believe, who once observed with regret that so many available euphonious and charming Christian names for men and women have been wasted on diseases. For example, where a more agreeable sound than that conveyed by the name Catarrh Carter or Diabetes White. Assuredly no current nomenclature is so soothing to the ear. Erysipelas is a prettier name than Alice or Mable or Grace, surely; just as Tonsilitis is a smarter name than George or Henry or even Montgomery. Which is the more mellifluous: Clara Jones or Pneumonia Jones, Gustave Smith or Appendicitis Smith? Which is the more musical: Susan Jackson or Diphtheria Jackson, Jacob Robinson or Syphilis Robinson?

— George Jean Nathan

A good thing that you can say about water is that it is not sodium, […]

— James Mahaffey, Atomic Accidents

Nobody likes microfilm except for the fact that it’s indispensable

— Slow Fires, I think

It’s desirable every thing printed should be preserved, for we cannot now tell how useful it may become two centuries hence.

— Christopher Baldwin, 1834

I predict that a century hence the Canadian people will be the noblest specimens of humanity on the face of the earth

— Rev John Bredin, 1863

In the twenty-first century mankind will subsist entirely upon jellies.

— The Book Lover, 1903

The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by electricity, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will be left to do unaided will be to make love.

— Mrs John Lane, The Fortnightly, 1905

To-day, in the city of New York, sixty-six different tongues are spoken. A century hence, there will probably be only one.

— The American Historical Magazine, 1907

I often think what interesting history we are making for the student of the twenty-first century.

— William Carey Jones, 1908

China may be a great shoe market a decade or a century from now.

— Boot and Shoe Recorder, 1914

We cannot settle the problem, and I venture the prophecy that perhaps a century from now this same question may be brought before some future society and discussed very much as it is tonight.

— Dr. Barton C. Hirst, On abortion, 1914

By the twenty-first century we shall all be telepaths.

— Gumbril, a character in Aldous Huxley’s novel Antic Hay, 1923

The physician of the twenty-first century… may even criticize the language of the times, and may find that some of our words have become as offensive to him as the term “lunatic” has become offensive to us.

— Dr. C. Macfie Cambell, 1924

Historians of the twenty-first century will look back with well-placed scorn on the shallow-minded days of the early twentieth century when football games and petting parties were considered the most important elements of a college education.

— Mary Eileen Ahern, Library Bureau, 1926

In the year A.D. 2014 journalists will be writing on the centenary of the great war — that is, if there has not been a greater war.

— F.J.M, The Journalist, 1934

If a lion could speak, we could not understand him

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

— Thomas Stearns Elliot

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

— Mark Twain

Early in the war, at least three economists were reputed to have committed suicide after trying to work out how to pay for everything.

— Stuart Slade, Pantheocide

Science fiction fans relate more to human beings than to silicon chips.

— Burnside’s Zeroth Law of space combat

If man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs—those creatures whom we often deride as nature’s failures—then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word ‘ship’ will mean— ‘spaceship.’

— Arthur C. Clarke, quoted by Hugh Downs, Ad Astra, Fall 2008

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Reactionless Drives In Their Universes

— Burnside’s Advice

It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

— Elizabeth Taylor

It’s a hard day

— General Bogan, Fail Safe, 1964

The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

— Thomas Jefferson, 1791

I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion.

— Jack Kerouac

Oh, boy, it’s Friday!
Only two more working days until Monday.

— Rocketdyne Engineer

You may delay, but time will not.

— Benjamin Franklin

The face is like the penis.

— Silvan Solomon Tomkins

Opinions are like ani, Watson. Everyone has one.

— Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Every procedure for getting a cat to take a pill works fine — once. Like the Borg, they learn…

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

A true beanie should have a propellor on the top.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It’s generally a better bet. There’s more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say “it was god’s will” when granny dies, but they get *angry* when they lose a cow.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I didn’t go to university. Didn’t even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

“Out of Print” is bookseller speak for “We can’t be hedgehogged”.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I save about twenty drafts — that’s ten meg of disc space — and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there’s a cry here of ‘Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!’ and the rest are wiped.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Too many people want to *have written*.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disc, I overwrote it so I couldn’t get it back.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

You can’t remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn’t have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together.
It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy, humorless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Somewhere around the place I’ve got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger’s Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers… this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Botswana is also the only country in the world with a colour in its flag meant to represent rain (a sort of blue-grey). Not many people know this.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

There are *no* inconsistencies in the Discworld books; occasionally, however, there are alternate pasts.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Any town built by filling a mud hole with sawdust and proudly having a slug as a sort of civic totem is a town, one feels, where Rincewind would feel right at home.

— Terry Pratchett, “Terry looks forward to his visit to Seattle, USA.”, alt.fan.pratchett

Experience has taught me that you feel better on a flight if you avoid chicken fat in plastic sauce.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

It’s an old magical principle — it’s even filtered down into RPG systems — that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be ‘stored’ — in a staff, for example. No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I don’t think I’ve ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.

— Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

“That’s right, we’re philosophers. We think, therefore we am.”

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, “You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”

— Dydactylos the philosopher, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Si non confectus, non reficiat.

I’m a fanatical worrier only over things I have some control over.

— Terry Pratchett

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Per aspera ad astra

Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!

— Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that’s an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

You’re a teenager. It’s all complicated.

— Jenny B. Jones, There You’ll Find Me

I am a complicated person with a simple life and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.

— Charlotte Eriksson

Nothing in this world is complicated, only misunderstood.

— Chloe Gong, Our Violent Ends

I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn’t become still more complicated.

— Poul Anderson, Call Me Joe

Every Canadian has a complicated relationship with the United States, whereas Americans think of Canada as the place where the weather comes from.

— Margaret Atwood

Ah—that’s the beauty of higher education, sergeant. Never use two simple words when one really complicated one will do.

— Caroline Graham, Written In Blood

If a new mining discovery or some novelty of that sort does not come to improve the actual situation, the crisis that has long been felt, will worsen

— Aníbal Pinto, President of Chile, 1878.

Everyone wants to save the world, they just… they disagree on how.

— Maximus, Fallout (2024)

War. War Never Changes.

The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.

— Earle Hitchner

We are more alike than we are unalike.

— Maya Angelou

We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don’t guarantee that more than one of them is random.

— IBM Programmer, RANDU

The solution to the problem changes the problem.

— Peer’s Law

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

— Fran Lebowitz

You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.

— Nevil Shute, Round the Bend

Without work men are utterly undone.

— Nevil Shute, Ruined City

Maybe we’ve been too silly to deserve a world like this.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

You can call a sunset by a filthy name, but you do not spoil its beauty, monsieur.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

There are some things about oneself that it’s not very nice to wake up to.

— Nevil Shute, On the Beach

You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love.

— Nevil Shute, Round the Bend

An engineer is a man who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound

— Nevil Shute, Slide Rule

I will not assert she is unsinkable, but I can say confidently that, whatever the accident, this vessel would not go down before time had been given to save any person on board. I will go a bit further. I cannot imagine any condition that would cause the Adriatic to founder. I cannot conceive of any fatal disaster happening to this ship. Modern shipbuilding has reduced that danger to a minimum

— Captain Edward John Smith, May 1907

You know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It’s just not really widely reported.

— David St. Hubbins, This is Spın̈al Tap

Death smiles at us all.
All we can do is smile back

— Marcus Aurelius

Freeing man’s mind to shape the future.

— IBM Slogan

A facility for quotation covers an absence of original thought

— Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home

— Ken Olsen, Founder / CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s

— Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, 1998

Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

— Rutherford Birchard Hayes

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

— Rhett Butler

We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.

— Winston Churchill, Popular Mechanics, March 1932

Satire doesn’t stand a chance against reality anymore.

— Jules Feiffer, 1959

There there

— Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Of all things, I liked books best.

— Nikola Tesla

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

— Nikola Tesla

One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

— Nikola Tesla

Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

— Nikola Tesla

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

— Nikola Tesla

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.

— Nikola Tesla

What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.

— Nikola Tesla

We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences

— Nikola Tesla

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

— Nikola Tesla

Its not the love you make. It’s the love you give.

— Nikola Tesla

Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.

— Nikola Tesla

Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.

— Nikola Tesla

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you the Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.

— Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

[It] Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking

— Old Timex Wristwatch Slogan

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

— Frédéric Chopin

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

— Isaac Asimov

Everyone should keep a pile of aphorisms lying around – you never know when you’ll need one.

— Robert Heaton

In any field find the strangest thing and then explore it.

— John Archibald Wheeler

When we trace the history o f psychology we are led into a labyrinth o f fanciful opinions, contradictions, and absurdities intermixed with some truths.

— Thomas Reid

Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science.

— Wolfgang Kohler

And still they gaz’d and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village

The function of the brain cannot be completely disconnected from the function of its basic units, the nerve cells.

— Idan Segev

The art of research [is] the art of making difficult problems soluble by devising means of getting at them.

— Sir Peter Medawar

Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins.

— Scrope Davies

. . . I believe the best test of a model is how well can the modeller answer the questions ‘What do you know now that you did not know before?’ and ‘How can you find out if it is true?”’

— James M. Bower

Philosophy is written in that great book that lies before our gaze —I mean the universe— but we cannot under stand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.

— Galileo

Through purely logical thinking we can attain no knowledge whatsoever of the empirical world.

— Albert Einstein

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.
You can keep your sterile truths for yourself.

— Vilfredo Pareto

Prediction is difficult, especially if it concerns the future.

Our own subjective inner life, including sensory experiences, feelings, thoughts, volitional choices, is what really matters to us as human beings.

— Benjamin Libet

Of making many books there is no end;
and much study is weariness of the flesh.

— Ecclesiastes 12:12

For in the dew of little things the heart finds it’s morning and is refreshed

— Kahlil Gibran

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