This page contains a ton of quotes, taken mostly from the program fortune-mod. Some are funny, some are serious, some are seriously funny, most of them are straight geek so unfortunately you Normals out there might not get them. But there should be something here for everyone. This page is basically a dumping ground for all the good quotes I find, so it gets a bit long. I certainly do not agree with all these quotes, but I thought they at least presented a good point, or were funny. Take your pick.
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus < north pole > town
cp /etc/passwd list
ncheck list
ncheck list
grep naughty list > nogiftlist
grep nice list > giftlist
santa claus < north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
ACHTUNG!!!Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappender springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit spitzensparken. Ist nichtfur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen handsin das pockets. Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!!
“Violence accomplishes nothing.” What a contemptible lie! Raw, nakedviolence has settled more issues throughout history than any other methodever employed. Perhaps the city fathers of Carthage could debate theissue, with Hitler and Alexander as judges?
“…Deep Hack Mode–that mysterious and frightening state ofconsciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread.”
(By Matt Welsh)
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
100 buckets of bits on the bus
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus
ad infinitum…
It’s trivial to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a real manto make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful.
Computers are like air conditioners — they stop working properly if you open WINDOWS
HAL 9000: Dave. Put down those Windows disks, Dave. DAVE!
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
First Law of Socio-Genetics:Celibacy is not hereditary.
Unix IS user friendly…it’s just selective about who its friends are.
Major premise:
Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise:
A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion:
Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
Secondary Conclusion:
Do you realize how many holes there would be if peoplewould just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
– Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”
You have many friends and very few living enemies.
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky’s so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you.
Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Phototropism makes ivy twine,
Rayleigh scattering makes sky so blue,
Sexual hormones are why I love you.
Microsoft should switch to the vacuum cleaner business where people actually want products that suck.
– Bruno Bratti
We is confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
– Walt Kelly, “Pogo”
If I were to walk on water, the press would say I’m only doing it because I can’t swim.
– Bob Stanfield
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell thetruth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced,”Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a questionwhich will be put to him.” Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of theguard asked him, “Where are you going? Tell the truth — the alternativeis death by hanging.”
“I am going,” said Nasrudin, “to be hanged on that gallows.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!”
“But that would make it the truth!”
“Exactly,” said Nasrudin, “your truth.”
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere inthe universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. — Calvin
Egotism, n:
Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
Where there are visible vapors, having their prevenance in ignited carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
“Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue.”
– Peter Neumann, about Usenet
History has much to say on following the proper procedures. From a history of the Mexican revolution “Hidalgo was later defeated at Guadalajara. The rebel army was captured on its way through the mountains. All were courtmartialed and shot, except Hidalgo, because he was a priest. He was handed over to the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the army where he was then executed.”
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
– Robert Heinlein
If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer…..
Here’s an easy game to play.
Here’s an easy thing to say:
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!
You can’t say this? What a shame, sir!
We’ll find you another game, sir.
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to ram your rom.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!
— DementDJ@ccip.perkin-elmer.com (DementDJ) [rec.humor.funny]
Clarke’s Conclusion:
Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.
Why program by hand in five days what you can spend five years of your life automating.
– Terrence Parr
I think the world is ready for the story of an ugly duckling, who grew up toremain an ugly duckling, and lived happily ever after.
– Chick
Stupidity got us into this mess — why can’t it get us out?
“Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time.”
– a coffee cup
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,and wrong.
– H. L. Mencken
Burn’s Hog Weighing Method:
(1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse.
(2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
(3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
— Robert Burns
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet, challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb of innocence. To yield to its blandishments is so easy. The wrong, it seems, is venial… Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of adventurous youth.
– Benjamin Cardozo
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
The voters have spoken, the bastards…
– unknown
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires.
– Dave Barry, “The Taming of the Screw”
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What’s the first question that the computer community asks?
“Is it PC compatible?”
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be alaw against it by that time.
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you, “There’s a time for work and a time for play,” never find the time for play?
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the
group.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: “Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America,” or “Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.”
– Dave Barry, “An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar”
How many Michigan college students does it take to change a light bulb?
At Michigan State it takes two thousand. One to change the bulb, and the other one thousand nine hundred ninety nine to riot and set it on fire.
At Michigan it takes three. One to change it and the other two to talk about how they did it every bit as good as an ivy leaguer.
At Grand Valley State and Alma it takes ten, one to change the bulb and the other nine to sit around and watch because it is the big entertainment of the evening.
At Ferris it takes zero. They are all too drunk from the night before to care whether or not the lights are on.
At Eastern it takes four. One to change the bulb, one to steal the new bulb from the store, one as a look out, and one to drive the getaway car.
At Central Michigan it takes nine. One to screw it in and the other eight just screw each other in celebration.
At Wayne State it takes zero. Who wants to be in Detroit after dark anyway?
At Western it takes twelve, two to figure out how to screw it in and ten other drunks to find an ugly enough lamp shade to match their school colors.
At Adrian it takes zero. There is no electricity in Adrian, only cows and corn.
At Northern it takes five. Four to strap on snow shoes and hike 10 miles to the nearest store to get the new bulb and one to screw it in.
At Michigan Tech and Kettering University it takes twenty. One to change the bulb and the other nineteen to find a new way to engineer it so it never has to be changed again.
At Hillsdale, Albion, and Kalamazoo it takes zero. They have Mommy and Daddy pay someone to do it for them.
At Saginaw Valley it takes five, one to bring the weed and four to smoke it while they all imagine they screwed it in.
At Oakland it takes zero, they can’t afford light bulbs just like they cannot afford a football team.
At Macomb it takes zero, they live at home, mom and dad control the lights.
At Calvin, Aquinas, and Cornerstone it takes 20. One to praise the Lord for light and the other 19 to contemplate how to screw without it being against their religion.
And then, a friend of mine came up with this modification the the Calvin one:
30. 10 to get approval for a new lightbulb, 10 to dispute the racist ideas behind using “white” light, 9 philosophers to point out that white light isn’t racist, and 1 CS major who says “screw all of you”, and just screws in the f*^#%! lightbulb.
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.– Elbert Hubbard
If you learn one useless thing every day, in a single year you’ll learn 365 useless things.
… 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
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views … which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.
– Doctor Who, “Face of Evil”
Nouvelle cuisine, n.:
French for “not enough food”.
Continental breakfast, n.:
English for “not enough food”.
Tapas, n.:
Spanish for “not enough food”.
Dim Sum, n.:
Chinese for more food than you’ve ever seen in your entire life.
(as seen on a bumper sticker) I’ll hug your elephant if you’ll kiss my ass.
If the user points the gun at his foot and pulls the trigger, it is our job to ensure the bullet gets where it’s supposed to.
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
– Rod Serling
Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what is wrong with it.
How dare the government intervene to stifle innovation in the computer industry! That’s Microsoft’s job, dammit!
Join in the new game that’s sweeping the country. It’s called “Bureaucracy”. Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do anything loses.
What do you have when you have six lawyers buried up to their necks in sand?
Not enough sand.
Linux supports the notion of a command line or a shell for the same reason that only children read books with only pictures in them. Language, be it English or something else, is the only tool flexible enough to accomplish a sufficiently broad range of tasks.
– Bill Garrett
My calculator is my shepherd, I shall not want
It maketh me accurate to ten significant figures,
and it leadeth me in scientific notation to 99 digits.
It restoreth my square roots and guideth me along paths of floating decimal points for the sake of precision.
Yea, tho I walk through the valley of surprise quizzes,
I will fear no prof, for my calculator is there to hearten me.
It prepareth a log table to comfort me,
it prepareth an arc sin for me in the presence of my teachers.
It annoints my homework with correct solutions, my interpolations are over.
Surely, both precision and accuracy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of Texas instruments forever.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
– Aldous Huxley
“How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“FIFTEEN!! YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?”
It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.
– Roger Babson
In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains. As night falls the wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle. After everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the
camp.
After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day. The drums get louder and louder.
Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, “I don’t likethe sound of those drums.”
Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp: “IT’S NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER.”
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
— Mark Harrold
People who think they know everything greatly annoy those of us who do.
Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.
He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
— Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (Dune books, Frank Herbert)
The difference between common-sense and paranoia is that common-sense is thinking everyone is out to get you. That’s normal — they are. Paranoia is thinking that they’re conspiring.
— J. Kegler
Knocked, you weren’t in.
— Opportunity
The algorithm for finding the longest path in a graph is NP-complete.
For you systems people, that means it’s *real slow*.
— Bart Miller
I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to tell such LIES!
Q: Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?
A: You do all of the work and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.
Woman was taken out of man — not out of his head, to rule over him; nor out of his feet, to be trampled under by him; but out of his side, to be equal to him — under his arm, that he might protect her, and near his heart that he might love her.
— Henry
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and failed.
— motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
This code passes Torvalds test grades 0, 1 and 2 (it looks ok, it compiles and it booted).
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies. Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and quiet place in which to rest. One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said, “Come on down.” But the fly was too clever for him and said, “I never light where I don’t see other flies and I don’t see any other flies in your house.” So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said, “Hold it, stupid, that’s flypaper. All those flies are trapped.” “Don’t be silly,” said the fly, “they’re dancing.” So he settled down and became stuck to the flypaper with all the other flies.
Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
— James Thurber, “The Fairly Intelligent Fly”
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
— Albert Einstein
“If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change almost all occurrences of the word “paradigm” into “example” or “model.”
— Herbie Blashtfalt
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 1:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
— “Applied Optics”, vol. 11, A14, 1972