The problem is TV leaves nothing to the imagination. When I read a book I can make the characters look however I want. I can turn a hill into a mountain, a pond into a lake or a stream into a river. You can't do that with TV. --- Alan Marshall (aka Andrew Myers) in "Slash Killer" by Bill Kitson; Detective Mike Nash series, book 5). Examples of the mendacity and malevolence of free enterprise: 1. It is constantly asserted that "immigrants are taking our jobs. The reality is that big businesses seek to pay criminally low wages to people with fewer choices). 2. Unpaid internships --- ban them! 3. Logo T-shirts. The consumer literally pays to advertise a brand. 4. In the U.S. the lie is spread that billionaires and CEOs are self-made men and women. Most wealth in America is inherited and most who claim to be "self-made" were born into wealthy families. 5. The perpetual corporate propaganda that global warming is the responsibility of the individual, rather than of about 100 corporations. 6. Everything to do with wedding and engagement rings. --- Sideswipe, 17 March 2022 It's hard to RTFM if you don't know which FMTR. --- Spencer Graves Windows updates cause more problems than they fix. --- Ed (on claws-mail users mailing list, 2 June 2022) We should be deeply suspicious of speculations that come unaccompanied by hard evidence. --- Jerry A. Coyne (in Chapter 9 of "Why Evolution is True", Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 250.) Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. --- Quoted in "Wicked Game" by Matt Johnson, Ch. 83. A web search revealed the quote to be attributed to Confucius, but apparently no confirmation of this source has been found. I must say that I'd thought Microsoft "Help" pages were bad enough, but the Google Cloud documentation excels in terms of obscurity! --- Rosemary Lockie (claws-mail users mailing list, 27 March 2022) And with the inevitable hangover from the unwise mixing of grain and grape comes the deeper, spiritual one, a nagging feeling of ennui, a melancholy sense that, as the old John Lennon Christmas song has it, another year is over and what have I done? Not enough, of that we can be sure. --- Greg Dixon (New Zealand Listener, 25 December 2021) One day people are gonna learn that cover ups always make what's being covered up seem worse than it actually is. --- Commander Rory Burke ("Wolf Point" by Ian K. Smith) The trick is not to say "Why did you move the sofa?" It's better to say "That looks nice." --- David Shearer (New Zealand Listener, 25 December 2021) Experience is the knowledge you get just after you needed it. --- Anon. Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald. --- Chinese proverb (Sideswipe, NZ Herald, 18 March 2022) An' here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going through all these things twice --- Bob Dylan ("Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"; Blonde on Blonde album) [Ryan] lived his life by reference to logic and reason. He had no patience for conspiracy theories or fairy tales about castles in the sky; not when there were real problems in the world that required real solutions. Mostly, he kept his counsel, and let others live as they chose, as long as their flights of fancy weren't dangerous. But now, given the situation that he found himself in, Ryan was was forced to ask himself whether all those years of polite silence had indeed been a mark of tolerance, or whether he'd been one of the many enablers in the world. For, if fantasies were left uncorrected, they became fact to the person that made them and allowed them to fester and grow. Worse still, they could take on new life. --- from "Cuthbert's Way" by L.J. Ross (DCI Ryan mystery number 17) The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober. --- Arian Seid (quoted in an ad for "Wines Online", 13/07/2021) Dear Colleagues, You may be experiencing issues with the Microsoft Office 365 platform this morning. Microsoft has a worldwide degradation of service across its suite of products. This is intermittent, and while some staff may be successfully using their products, others will not. --- email sent out to University of Auckland staff on 16 March 2021 I think it shows a great deal of failed initiative. --- Dr. Siri (in "The Coroner's Lunch", by Colin Cotterill) There seems to be a popular contest to discover offence everywhere. I don't think that it does anything against racism, sexism or antidisestablishmentarianism. Words are plucked from our vast lexicon to comfort or insult our fellows depending upon the intent of the user. It is the intent that matters, not the poor word. Chasing the words wastes your time, blames those who use the words harmlessly, and gives the real offender time to find another epithet. --- Jim Lemon, post to R-help 17/11/2020 [In response to a post complaining about the use of the "offensive/racist/etc." colour name "indianred".] Searching online is seldom informative, there is a poor signal-to-noise ratio. --- Roger Bivand (post to r-sig-geo, 13/08/2020) Adobe's intent is not to make users happy. Their intent is to make money. --- Reinhard Kotucha (texhax mailing list, 2 August 2020) Remark: An assertion of this nature could be applied to all of capitalism, not just to Adobe. It is common to assume that we are dealing with a highly intelligent book when we cease to understand it ... Yet the association between difficulty and profundity might less generously be described as a manifestation in the literary sphere of a perversity familiar from emotional life, where people who are mysterious and elusive can inspire a respect in modest minds that reliable and clear ones do not. --- Allain de Botton (quoted in London Review of Books, Vol. 24 No. 16 -- 22 August 2002)` Schrödinger's Douchebag: A guy who says offensive things and decides whether he was joking based on the reaction of people around him. --- from Sideswipe, New Zealand Herald, 7 July 2020. [The] Concorde still looks as if a crack has opened in the fabric of the Universe and a message from tomorrow has been poked through. Age has, however, made it clear that the tomorrow in question is yesterday's tomorrow. --- Francis Spufford ("Love that Bird", London Review of Books, Vol. 24 No. 11, 6 June 2002) You can always count on Americans to do the right thing --- after they've tried everything else. --- attributed to various (non-American) politicians Don't blame a clown for acting like a clown, blame yourself for going to the circus. --- Gandhi One of the dangers that we're in is if people like me keep thinking that everybody who voted for Trump is a racist or an asshole, then we're fucked, because it's simply not true. --- Steve Earle (in a commentary relating to his new album "Ghosts of West Virginia", released 29/May/2020). Some things are better left unsaid. --- Hillary Flammond (played by Lucy Gutteridge, in the movie "Top Secret"). Note: Ya gotta see the movie to understand! :-) Britain's royal family is deplorable principally because it institutionalises the corrosive divisions of social class. --- Richard Lloyd Parry (review of "Akihito and the Sorrows of Japan", London Review of Books, 19 March 2020) Paranoia is the rational response to a system whose rules and goals are shrouded in secrecy. --- William Davies (review of "Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason" by Justin E.H. Smith, London Review of Books, Vol. 41 No. 23, 5 December 2019 pages 19-22). First be *right*, only then think of being fast. --- Martin Maechler (R-help, 6 December 2019) Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. --- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) (Taken from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lucius_annaeus_seneca_118600 ) What is said in "true love" is usually the same in ersatz relationships and misunderstandings occur at a phonetic level of conversation rather than at a deeper level. --- John Smith The danger of offering advice is that it is usually misinterpreted or acted on in a totally different way from what the adviser had intended. People rarely check and recheck whether they had understood correctly and cryptic messages are esteemed. --- John Smith Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups it is the norm. --- Nietzsche An examination can do little harm, so long as its standard is low. --- G. H. Hardy A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks tied to its head. --- from the signature file of Jeffrey M. Hunter, in a posting to R-help (13/09/2018) Collective noun: an intrusion of journalists. --- taken from "Stalker on the Fens", by Joy Ellis ... technology is significantly lowering our attention span: in 2000 the average attention span was 12 seconds; in 2013 it had dropped to 8 seconds. And what makes this really discouraging news is science has found your average goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds! You know the world is really messed up when your goldfish has a better attention span than the people you live with! --- SDA (!!!) Bulletin, 19/March/2018 To a Californian, the basic difference between the people and the pigeons in New York is that the pigeons don't shit on each other. --- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts" If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it. --- Pierre Gallois Brophy and Partridge found that obscenity was so over-used among the military in the Great War that if a soldier wanted to express emotion he wouldn't swear. `Thus if a sergeant said, "Get your fucking rifles!" it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said, "Get your rifles!" there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger.' --- Review by Bee Wilson of "The Littlehampton Libels" by Christopher Hilliard, London Review of Books, vol. 40, No. 3, 8 February 2018, pp. 16 -- 18. Any imperfection in a publicly administered institution is held up as instant and incontrovertible proof of the fatal inefficiency of a 'public goods' model; but whenever something goes wrong with a marketised system, it proves only the need for a further extension of market forces. --- Lorna Finlayson (London Review of Books blog, 2 January 2018) On fixed-vs.-random effects: Although I don't know your situation scientifically, tissues and organs or combinations thereof don't strike me as reasonable random effects. It might be helpful if you would state one or more biological hypothesis, which would then as a rule involve fixed effects. I like an old rule that goes like this. Imagine telling someone how to repeat your study. Would you tell them which organs and tissues should be involved? (Then probably fixed.) Or could you just say "it doesn't really matter - just get a respectable number of tissues (etc.)." (Then perhaps random.) --- David Farrar (on r-sig-mixed-models, 05/10/2017) It is easier to blame our problems on wicked men and women than to accept that they may be insoluble. --- Nick Cohen (in a review of "To Kill the President" by Sam Bourne, Guardian Weekly 28/07/2017, p. 36) Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. --- Oscar Wilde (quoted by Doug Bates in r-sig-mixed-models, 26/07/2017) Why I chose Linux: Because with Linux I choose how my operating system is going to perform a task, instead of my operating system choosing how I'm going to perform a task. --- Steven (posting on the Ubuntu-Mate Community Forum) I'm so broke I can't even pay attention! --- Edward Turner Well she said she'd stick around until the bandages came off, But these mama's boys just don't know when to quit. And Matilda asks the sailors "Are those dreams or are those prayers?" So close your eyes son, and this won't hurt a bit. --- Tom Waits She's got her own mind. More than one, sometimes. --- Audrey, in the short story "Vishnu Summer" by David Prill, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August 2016, pp. 152 -- 183. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. --- Albert Einstein Definition of "Analytics": First year statistics done by people who aren't statisticians. --- Tilman Davies (at NZSA/ORSNZ meeting, November 2016) I'm curious what might be causing it [i.e. a problem about the "natural sequencing of email threads getting corrupted"] and if there is something I can do about it - short of contacting IT staff, which is more irritating than the corrupted threads. --- Mark Fowler (in an email to R-help) Windows (TM) [Typhoid Mary]. They refuse to believe that there's anything wrong with it, but everyone else knows Windows is a disease that spreads. --- "Tim"'s signature file. Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before. --- Steven Wright In the grip of religious conviction, a person will commit acts too horrific to otherwise contemplate. --- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (New York Times Review of Books, 20 November 2015) He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. --- Anon. I have a strange feeling that everything is falling apart. --- Mickey (a post to the Community support for Fedora users mailing list) Our society teaches people to overvalue innovation so as to distract them from more important things such as freedom, democracy, and giving everyone a comfortable life. --- Richard Stallman Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. --- Dandemis -- Fedora users mailing list There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code. --- Anon. I find it a little disheartening that in this era, engineers in training are averse to programming, though. --- Dennis Murphy (in an R-help discussion about R GUIs to use in an introductory statistics course for engineers). We're all dying. The world's just a hospice with fresh air. --- Dan Torrance (in "Doctor Sleep" by Stephen King) Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. --- Dwight D. Eisenhower It's also my experience that computing, regardless of the software that I've used, is the least problematic part of the course [that I am teaching]. It's much harder for students to understand statistical concepts, and even to apply simple formulas correctly, than to use menu-driven statistical software. --- John Fox, R-help list, 18/11/2013 Most problems can be solved by careful analysis of the situation, thoughtful planning and rational execution of a plan. But when you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember your job was to drain the swamp! --- Rick Stevens, Fedora list (4/05/2013), quoting from ?? I once had a discussion with an economist who told me in almost these exact words: "I don't care what the data say, the theory is so clear". --- Albyn Jones (r-help 28 April 2013) The following comment on economic research is from a 2010 article in the Atlantic reviewing John Ioannidis' work. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/11/ lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/ "Medical research is not especially plagued with wrongness. Other meta-research experts have confirmed that similar issues distort research in all fields of science, from physics to economics (where the highly regarded economists J. Bradford DeLong and Kevin Lang once showed how a remarkably consistent paucity of strong evidence in published economics studies made it unlikely that any of them were right)." --- Posted to r-help by Bill Dunlap, 27 April 2013 The prior for the incompetence/malice question is usually best set pretty heavily in favour of incompetence ... --- S. Ellison (r-help, 27 April 2013) ... rules [exist] solely for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of the foolish. --- Philip Taylor (Quoting? From?) The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy -- the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. --- J.K. Galbraith I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it. --- Terry Pratchett Worthless. --- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS (Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842. ... Christian ethics demand that you should not take revenge. The paradox is that Christians worship a God who is the greatest avenger of them all. Defy him and you burn in eternal hell, an act of revenge which is completely out of proportion to the crime, almost a case for Amnesty International, if you ask me. --- Stale Aune (in "Nemesis" by Jo Nesbo) I have problems with a religeon which says that faith in itself is enough for a ticket to heaven. In other words that the ideal is your ability to manipulate your own common sense to accept something that your intellect rejects. It's the same model of intellectual submission that dictatorships have used throughout time, the concept of a higher reasoning without any obligation to discharge the burden of proof. --- Harry Hole (in "The Redeemer" by Jo Nesbo) [When] Buck finds that there's no room for him at the trough ... he turns nasty, breaks bad on the world. He had the right stuff and deserved to be wealthy, so somebody else must be to blame. It must be the welfare bums. It must be all of those taxes for "social programs for minorities," code for "throwing money at blacks and Mexicans." Or tax-and-spend liberals. Or "big government." It can't possibly be because of the rich elites, because, dammit son, rich is what Buck is trying to be! --- Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus) The WYSIWYG is a myth. It does not exist. What people usually call WYSIWYG is, in fact, CYSACYG (Crap You See And Crap You Get) --- Victor Ivrii We're all atheists. You don't believe in Zeus or Thor or Neptune or Augustus Caesar or Mars or Venus or Sun Ra. You reject a thousand gods. Why should it bother you if someone else rejects a thousand and one? --- Jack Reacher (in "Nothing To Lose" by Lee Childs) I'd rather ask a stupid question than make a stupid mistake. --- Spencer Graves (R-help, September 2011) If you really want to assess uncertainty you need to take into account that the models are false and that several models may capture different aspects of the data and so be false in different ways. --- Brian D. Ripley (R-help, July 2007) 'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it. --- W.C. Fields People with strong faith in public schools are to be cherished and the same is true of each example of schools that have overcome enormous odds. The methods of those schools need to be studied, promoted and replicated so that more educators will be influenced by their success. But these successes should not be used as a cudgel to attack other educators and schools. And they should certainly never be used to excuse societal neglect of the very causes of the obstacles that extraordinary educators must overcome. It is poor policy indeed that erects huge barriers to the success of millions of students, cherry-picks and praises a few schools that appear to clear these barriers, and then blames the other schools for their failure to do so. --- David Berliner [If] the model can't be adequately fitted by the data [then] either get more data or choose a more appropriate model. --- Berton Gunter GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and impossible to accomplish complex actions. --- Doug Gwyn (22/Jun/91 in `comp.unix.wizards') Atheism is a non-prophet organization. --- ??? (From Peter Dyballa's signature file.) In many cases [the problem of calculating the likelihood in a non-independent model] often looks difficult, but on closer inspection turns out to be impossible. --- Bill Venables ... the key to good exposition is to say everything twice: informally and formally. --- Donald Knuth Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. --- Benjamin Franklin I have long been a proponent of the following unified field theory for statistics: "Almost all of statistics is linear regression, and most of what is left over is non-linear regression." --- Robert I. Jennrich (University of California at L.A.) It is folly to use as one's guide in the selection of fundamental science the criterion of utility. Not because [scientists] despise utility. But because ... useful outcomes are best identified after the making of discoveries, rather than before. --- John C. Polyani If you are learning rubbish, it won't be improved by storage in an e-portfolio. --- David Chapman Nothing travels faster in a vacuum than a bandwagon. --- Richard Harker The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from the given body of data. --- John Tukey Remember, everything is better than everything else given the right comparison. --- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try. --- Sophocles On the whole, I prefer cats to women because cats rarely if ever use the word "relationship". --- Richard ("Kinky") Friedman The 'disagreement' [over which "Type" of sum of squares to use] is really over whether this is a sensible question to ask in the first place. One side of the debate suggests that the real question is what hypotheses does it make sense to test and within what outer hypotheses. Settle that question and no issue on "types" of sums of squares arises. This is often a hard question to get your head around, and the attraction of offering a variety of 'types of sums of squares' holds out the false hope that perhaps you don't need to do so. The bad news is that for good science and good decision making, you do. --- Bill Venables One should not aim at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand. --- Quintilian At present mathematics is not a vocation. People don't become mathematicians and then get employed as such. The most we can say is that by studying mathematics people improve their employment prospects. --- Grant Cairns (Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society, vol. 33, no. 2, 2006, p. 80) Well begun is half done. --- Optimist. Half done is well begun. --- Realist. Half begun is well done. --- Australian. You can never know too little of what is not worth knowing at all. --- Anon. (Quoted in "Thought du jour", Social Studies, the Globe and Mail, 29 June 2006.) The fool mistakes power for virtue, acclaim for merit, non-conformity for dangerousness, conviction for truth, revenge for justice, license for liberty, and kindness for weakness. --- Anon. (Quoted in "Thought du jour", Social Studies, the Globe and Mail, 6 June 2006.) Remark: This quote sounds an awful lot like a description of a Stephen Harper supporter. Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. --- Charles Darwin In Search of Inspiration ======================== Give me an idea I said, and placing his lips to my ear, he breathed into my head. I must have been asleep, for what I saw was like a dream I could not keep, and when I tried to ask a question he had gone. --- John Hooper You can't expect statistical procedures to rescue you from poor data. --- Bert Gunter Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he'll be a mile away -- and barefoot. --- Holden Caulfield (in "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger) A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life. --- G. H. Hardy ("A Mathematician's Apology") Forecasting is like trying to drive a car blindfolded and following directions given by a person who is looking out of the back window. --- ??? 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 Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed. --- Iago (in Shakespear's "Othello") Behind every Bush there lurks a terrorist. --- Catherine Beck Disgust is reason's proper response to procreative nature. --- Camille Paglia There is no reason to suppose that most human beings are engaged in maximizing anything unless it be unhappiness, and even this with incomplete success. --- Ronald Coase (Introduction to "The Firm, the Market, and the Law") A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. Therefore a man without a woman is like a bicycle without a fish. --- ??? If it dies, it's biology. If it blows up, it's chemistry. If it doesn't work, it's physics. --- University washroom graffito One of the chief differences between ourselves and the ancients lies not (unfortunately) in human nature, but rather in the proliferation of our skills, and our institutions, and therefore in the number of niches in which the incompetent can instal themselves as persons of consequence. --- Charles Fair (The Jaws of Victory p. 22.) What is time? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not. --- St. Augustine (Confessions, Book XI.14) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From a review of "Marine Conservation for the 21st Century; Ocean of Facts for the US Citizen" by Hilary Viders (Best Publishing Co., Flagstaff Arizona, USA, 1995): This book has a myopic focus on what happens in the USA. ... It is a shock to read, of one of the few non US marine parks mentioned, that: `A large marine park which has met with success is based in Canberra, Australia, on the Great Barrier Reef.' The review, by Rob Day, Dep't. of Biology, Melbourne U., appeared in "South Pacific Underwater Medicine Journal", vol. 32, No. 2, June 2002, p. 87. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The stupidest prayers are often the soonest answered, for no deity can bear to listen to them. --- ??? I of dice possess the science And in number thus am skilled. --- The Mahabharata The reason that the Universe is so difficult to understand is that there is nothing to compare it with. --- graphito (?) Although artificial intelligence remains a remote possibility, genuine stupidity is an indisputable fact. --- Phillip Adams (The Weekend Australian, Review, 18-19 Aug. 2001) Ooooh, yeah! Life goes on, Long after the thrill of livin' is gone. --- John Mellancamp Man can live without breathing for a few minutes, without water for a few days, without food for a month, without thinking, for generations ... --- ??? How mathematicians remember the digits of pi (to 14 decimal places): Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the tough lectures involving complex functions. --- adapted from Social Studies, The Globe and Mail The best lack all conviction, # cf the Canadian Alliance The worst are filled with passionate intensity. # aka CCRAP. --- W. B. Yeats There is no politics quite as vicious as academic politics, because there is so little at stake. --- ??? (Attr. to Henry Kissinger) Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples. French-Canadians consumed by self-pity; the descendants of Scots who fled the Duke of Cumberland; Irish the famine; and Jews the Black Hundreds. Then there are the peasants from the Ukraine, Poland, Italy, and Greece, convenient to grow wheat and dig out the ore and swing the hammers and run the restaurants, but otherwise to be kept in their place. Most of us are still huddled tight to the border, looking into the candy store window, scared by the Americans on one side and the bush on the other. And now that we are here, prospering, we do our damn best to exclude more ill-bred newcomers, because they remind us of our own mean origins in the draper's shop in Inverness or the shtetl or the bog. --- Mordecai Richler (Solomon Gursky Was Here) The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant. --- quoted from (???) in a book by Robert B. Parker Celebrity is always suspect; Canadian celebrity is risible. --- Martin Levin ... the theory of probability is at bottom only common sense reduced to calculation; it makes us appreciate with exactitude what reasonable minds feel by a sort of instinct, often without being able to account for it. ... It is remarkable that this science which originated in the consideration of games of chance should become the most important object of human knowledge. ... The most important questions of life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability. --- Laplace (Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace) Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. --- William Pitt Things are bad, they're going to get worse, and they're never going to get better. --- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Alcohol and Calculus don't mix --- never drink and derive. --- Anon. Beware the man who struggles hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is filled with murderous resentment of those who did not come by their ignorance the hard way. --- The Books of Bokonon (in "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by stupidity. --- Fuller (???) Examinations are formidable, even to the well-prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. --- ??? Canada? I don't even know what street it's on. --- Al Capone Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead. --- Tom Waits Well, I wish I was On some Australian mountain range. I got no reason to be there, But I imagine it would be some kind of change. --- Robert Zimmerman It's hard to get in there and pitch when you're not even sure what game you're supposed to be playing. --- Denny MacLean The ultimate argument against astrology ... Alice Cooper and Dan Quayle were born on the same day. --- Tom Rosseter 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 The truth is Canada is a cloud-cuckoo-land, an insufferably rich country governed by idiots, its self-made problems offering comic relief to the ills of the real world out there, where famine and racial strife and vandals in office are the unhappy rule. --- Mordecai Richler (Barney's Version) Why isn't "thesaurus" in my thesaurus? --- Anon. The lottery is a tax on people who flunked math. --- Monique Lloyd Choisir, c'est renoncer tout le reste. Ne pas choisir, c'est renoncer tout. --- ???