William MacAllister, Jr
Republicans say they are for the middle case, but act for the wealthy. Democrats say they are for the poor, but act for the middle class. No one speaks for the poor.
Lyndon Johnson
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
Michelle Akers
Michelle Akers used to eye the other team and think, “It’s gonna be a bad day for you guys. You guys are going to want to leave ... Oh, you’re gonna have a hard day”
Richard Feynman on the Scientific Method
Now I am going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it. Now, don't laugh that is really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess. To see if this law is right what it would imply. Then we compare the computation results to nature. Or compare to experiment or experience. Compare it directly with observations to see it if works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn't make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is, if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That all there is to it.
From "Light in August" by William Faulkner
Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing.
Tim Brennan
Women may live longer, but they pay for it.
Dwight David Eisenhower
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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
George Carlin on God
And immediately, I thought of the sun. Happened like that. Overnight I became a sun-worshipper. Well, not overnight, you can't see the sun at night. But first thing the next morning, I became a sun-worshipper. Several reasons. First of all, I can see the sun, okay? Unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the sun. I'm big on that. If I can see something, I don't know, it kind of helps the credibility along, you know? So everyday I can see the sun, as it gives me everything I need; heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on the lake, an occasional skin cancer, but hey. At least there are no crucifixions, and we're not setting people on fire simply because they don't agree with us.
Sun worship is fairly simple. There's no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don't have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing. And the best thing about the sun, it never tells me I'm unworthy. Doesn't tell me I'm a bad person who needs to be saved. Hasn't said an unkind word. Treats me fine. So, I worship the sun. But, I don't pray to the sun. Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite.
Alan Alda on being Catholic
I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.
A British/Irish Discussion
This is the transcript of the actual radio conversation between the British and the Irish, off the coast of Kerry, Oct 1998. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-98.
Irish Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south, to avoid a collision.
British Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the north, to avoid a collision.
Irish Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
British This is the Captain of a British Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Irish Negative. I say again, You will have to divert YOUR course.
British This is the aircraft carrier HMS Britiannia, the second largest ship in the British Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15 degrees north, I say again, 15 degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
Irish We are a lighthouse. Your call.
Christmas, 1929
A friend of mine once sent me a draft of something he was writing entitled "The Story of My Life". He asked me for constructive criticism but I had a hard time ploughing through the long paragraphs about ancestors begetting ancestors and where they all came from until it all focused on one life — the author's. I want to leave for my children a story about a family and how they hung together and survived a bleak and cold Christmas. Our home was pretty barren of furniture that year, especially the dining and living rooms where the furniture had all been repossessed by a finance company. Indeed, the only thing left in the living room was my Mother’s piano.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, my father fitted pieces of cardboard into my shoes to block the holes in the soles and told me not to get them wet. Together we marched off to a grocery store on Pitman Street in Penns Grove owned and run by a man named Frank Pagano. My father asked him for credit so we could buy some food for Christmas, but we were rejected and told to get out, which we did. I barely understood what the problem was but later gathered that we already were indebted to Mr. Pagano and hadn’t paid for previous groceries. We walked home on a darkening afternoon with a sky heavy and gray. There wasn't any heat in the house so my brother and I went to bed to keep warm. So did my father. My mother eventually sat down at the piano and began to play Christmas songs in the dark. She had a marvelous musical memory and could remember the music for almost anything she had ever played. When she started on Silent Night my brother and I could hear my father sobbing and sobbing in his bed until my mother finally heard him and went to comfort him.
At about ten o'clock that night my sister came home from Woolworth's where she had been working. She gave what money she had to my Dad and laid two wrapped Christmas presents on the table. My father finally got up and he and I walked down to Smithy’s little grocery store on the river bank where it was bitterly cold. My Dad bought some kerosene and a few groceries and paid for it with the money Elsie, my sister, had given him. We went home and fired up the little kerosene stove in the kitchen where we all gathered, got warm and ate oatmeal, and then to bed. My brother and I were up at the crack of dawn to see what Santa had brought but of course there was nothing but the two presents which Elsie had brought home from Woolworth’s. I forget what Paul got but I got a box of dominoes, and that was it.
I still look back and remember that Christmas more warmly than almost any other because somebody loved us enough to cry and somebody spent her last penny on us to try and ease the pain of two little boys. At the time I'll admit it didn’t seem like much to Paul and me but as the years rolled by, what she did has grown and grown, and what my Dad did in humiliating himself and begging for credit has grown and grown, and what my mother did in bringing us the lovely music of Christmas on a bleak and barren Christmas Eve has grown and grown. We were a family.
by Willam H. MacAllister, Jr
Woody Guthrie Copyright
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, s all we wanted to do."
- Woody Guthrie
From an IRC Chat
"personally I'd prefer it if you stopped flaming the one other person I know who is seeing the same SID corruption issue at least until that's fixed. You could answer in terms other than moron etc…"
Colin Powell
"If you have a yes-man working for you, one of you is redundant."
Edna St. Vincent Millay
My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.
Donald Knuth
The most common TeX error message: "You can't do that in vertical mode."