Favorite Quotes
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
– Ronald Reagan
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
– attributed to Edsger Dijkstra
As a result of the fact that education has been tax-supported for such a long time, most people find it difficult to project an alternative. Yet there is nothing unique about education that distinguishes it from the many other human needs which are filled by private enterprise. If, for many years, the government had undertaken to provide all the citizens with shoes, and if someone were subsequently to propose that this field should be turned over to private enterprise, he would doubtless be told indignantly: What! Do you want everyone except the rich to walk around barefoot? But the shoe industry is doing its job with immeasurably greater competence than public education is doing its job.
– Nathanial Branden
Macs for productivity, Linux for stability, Windows for solitaire
– Unknown
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
– Ivan Turgenev
Whenever a programmer thinks, ‘Hey, skins, what a cool idea’, their computer’s speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls.
– Matt Robinson, in Jamie Zawinski’s LiveJournal blog
I fully support your proposed audio-cock technology.
– Jamie Zawinski, in reply to Matt Robinson’s post
It’s odd. People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen. You’d think that would also be obvious.
– Larry Wall, 2nd State of the Onion
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
– Albert Einstein
I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of the Earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator, while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course and order.
– Thomas Jefferson
As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
– Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759