Quotes page of Roland Smith
Quotes page of Roland Smith |
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There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
Stephen Hawking
The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it.
G.B. Shaw
A strong conviction isn’t automatically correct.
RFS
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming train.
When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
The disadvantage of sticking your head into the sand is that you’ll never know if someone is about to kick you in the rear.
The No. 1 remote administration tool for Windows NT is a car.
The best way to accellerate a computer running Windows is at 9.81 m/s²
Unix is user-friendly. It’s just a little picky about who it’s friends are.
There’s a door. Where does it go? It stays where it is, I think.
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once
John Archibald Wheeler
Error in REALITY.SYS Reboot universe? (y/n)
Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools
MCSE: Must Consult Someone Experienced
I haven’t lost my mind. I know exactly where I left it.
Emacs really does stand for “Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift”
the GNUS manual
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will.
When in doubt, use brute force
Ken Thompson
suit n.
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
Get Security. Get Freedom. Get Open-Source software. Your data depends upon it!
Windows leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to UNIX.
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
Sendmail.cf hacken… je kunt beter met een padvindersmes je been afzagen. Gaat sneller en is minder pijnlijk.
Vegetarians eat vegetables - Beware of humanitarians
Windows caters to everyone as though they are idiots. UNIX makes no such assumption. It assumes you know what you are doing, and presents the challenge of figuring it out for yourself if you don’t.
A wise man once said…. “Beware of those who would seek to divide… for all of us have more that is alike than not… those who would seek to divide have darkness in their heart.”
Momochi Sandayu Soke of Gyokko Ryu written in 1543 Tembun
Raise my fist in the face of god The ‘almighty’ who sends to war You cause evil and hate inside Everlasting attempt to destroy mankind.
Encryption: A powerful algorithmic encoding technique employed in the creation of computer manuals.
Bug: a feature that can’t be turned off.
Observe, reason, and experiment. (if you’re too dumb, just pray)
The hands that help are better than the lips that pray.
I would like to pass away in my sleep like that driver; not screaming like his passengers.
If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance
John Andrew Holmes
What You See Is All You Get
Brian Kernighan
Unix was not designed to stop people from doing stupid things, because that would also stop them from doing clever things.
Doug Gwyn
Good, Quick, Cheap: Choose Two.
Moen’s Law of Clueless Newbiehood: The whiniest new users, and especially the ones who claim your sole purpose in life should be to help them, always say that using MS Outlook.
Non urinat in ventum
A fool with a tool is still a fool
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
Henry Spencer
Perfect is the enemy of good
For a new monitor, nail here: [x]
If we couldn’t laugh at things that didn’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of the world around us.
Calvin and Hobbes
Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.
Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate!
Traveler, there is no path. You make the path as you walk.
Antonio Machado
Our past was chaos, our present is disarray, our future is flux.
Clay Shirky
There is something eternally attractive about the future. It is wholly imagined; full of possibility and devoid of flaw.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Albert Camus
When all is said and done, more usually gets said than done.
A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind.
Zou het toeval zijn dat “beleid” een anagram van “debiel” is?
Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course.
Helen Rowland
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
Sam Brown
We serve the highest abstraction of which we are aware, our community.
Kurt Vonnegut
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I just got my results back. I failed my Turing test :-(
They say that giving people some Knowledge is dangerous. Well, it’ll never be as dangerous as bags of Ignorance…
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem.
(Edwards’ Law)
Too strong a strong vision can kill you - you’ll walk right over the edge, firm in the knowledge of the path in front of you.
Linus Torvalds
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
AJP Taylor
Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.
Thus spake Steve Haflich: “When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like your thumb.” And there were spontaneous riots of agreement worldwide.
Hardware is like a parachute - works best when open.
Erfahrung ist die Summe aller Misereignisse. (Experience is the sum of all failures.)
X-rated movies are all alike … the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot.
The accumulation of power produces ill behavior.
John Gage (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24638.html)
I had occasion to write today, “Best viewed through the bottom of a beerglass” about a website that had another one of those binary Windows-only plugins.
Paul Martin, in the Monastery
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants
Thomas Jefferson
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end… liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition… The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern… Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is watching you.
Infonaut (/. User #96956)
The only way to herd cats is to block the exits.
Anonymous Coward on deadly.org
Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
“Men at Arms” Terry Pratchett
My standard response to statements like “We must implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!” was “You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times.” Tended to shut them up, at least for a moment.
Matt Roberds, in the Monastery
People who can’t get through their day without their religious rituals are self-made autistics, and they need to be told to get a life.
J. Neil Schulman
Het ene geloof is niet meer of minder achterlijk dan het andere, aangezien het verstand er buiten staat.
Elsbeth Etty, NRC Handelsblad
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
How come the preachers ask you to send your money to god, but give you their address?
Hank Williams
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain…
Each man should so conduct himself that fortitude appear in labours and dangers: temperance in foregoing pleasures: prudence in the choice between good and evil: justice in giving every man his own
Cicero
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Don’t overdo it.
Lao Tsu
Apple: insanely great eye candy
Getting up in the morning can ruin your whole day.
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.
Eric Hoffer [http://www.cascadepolicy.org/comments/believer.htm]
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Eric Hoffer [http://www.cascadepolicy.org/comments/believer.htm]
It is a mistake to conclude that because a human being desires meaning, the universe must supply one.
coljac (on kuro5hin)
Religion is what the common people see als true, the wise see as false, and the rulers see as usefull.
Seneca
conspiracy: the last resort of a failed argument
I find television very uplifting. The moment someone turns a TV on, I am inspired to read a good book.
Ben
Don’t buy what you can’t pay for. But when it comes to software, don’t pay for what you can’t buy.
seen on Slashdot
C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL
Bad Law fosters Civil Disobedience.
anubi (/. #640541)
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.
Brian W. Kernighan
Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
SquadBoy (/. #167263)
Religion - 1. n. The leading cause of war, death and complete idiocy in all of recorded history.
(/. #5632005)
Too bad ignorance isn’t painful
Don Lindsay
The propaganda term “Intellectual Property” is a creative fiction designed to confuse two separate types of limited control granted by government.
Note that in both cases the primary motivation is creation of goods for the public.
The fiction [of intellectual property] is that it isn’t property at all… it’s a time limited grant of monopoly, and it’s meant to expire. Property is a durable item, not a lease.
ka9dgx (/. #72702)
The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’.
entrox (/. #266621)
Efficiency is the enemy of reliability
Jerry Pournelle [http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view270.html]
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
H.L. Mencken [Roland’s corollary: The World Wide Web is everyones press.]
Confucius say: Well done is better than well said.
Confucius say: The wise speak when they have something to say, the fools speak when they have to say something.
Confucius say: If you worry about yesterday’s failures, todays successes will be few.
Confucius say: He who thinks by the inch and talks by the yard deserves to be kicked by the foot.
Confucius say: When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of hacking at the leaves.
Confucius say: To ignore the facts, does not change the facts.
Confucius say: The palest ink is better than the best memory.
Confucius say: It is impossible to sling mud with clean hands.
Confucius say: The young know the rules, the old know the exceptions.
Confucius say: If you can’t be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.
Confucius say: Asking a stupid question is better than repairing a stupid mistake.
But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
Richard Feynman
Why Are We Here? – No why. Just here.
John Cage
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
Napoleon
Politicians, like diapers, have to be changed frequently - and for the very same reason.
Shaw’s Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Bertrand Russell
Blessed are those who know how to think for themselves, truth will speak to them.
Bill (/. User #629286)
Truth is not determined by majority vote.
Professor Wiseman’s four top tips for becoming lucky: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3335275.stm) 1 Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right 2 Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine 3 Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well 4 Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy [ad 1: some experience in the subject matter required – RFS]
Luck occurs when preparedness meets opportunity.
Anon
Ever see a penguin fly? – Try Linux.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you
Age is a case of mind over matter; if you don’t mind it, it really doesn’t matter.
The optimist proclaims we are in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.
I get enough exercise just pushing my luck.
Very funny Scotty, now beam down my clothes.
But most likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus replication. (MS via the Wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20010207210623/\ http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office/2001/virus_alert.asp)
… you get your code tainted and are subject to lawsuits by your own suppliers if you use proprietary software.
dmscvc123 (on Groklaw)
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
[RFC1925 - section 2, subsection 3]
Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand.
[RFC1925 - section 2, subsection 4]
Top Ten Reasons to Date an Engineer 1. Complimentary Tutoring 2. Large Earning Potential 3. Can handle stress and strain in relationships 4. Know all the dynamics of relative motion 5. Learn about the benefits of friction and viscosity 6. FREE body diagrams 7. Always back up their hard drives 8. Trained to do it right the first time 9. Specialized in experimentation 10. Can go all night with no hint of fatigue
Q: What is the difference between an Engineer and a toilet? A: The toilet only has to deal with one asshole at a time.
As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
Benjamin Franklin
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, 1860.
I would contend that committed government attempts to “promote virtue” usually end up trying to eliminate temptation.
Steven Den Beste (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/06/VirtueisasVirtuedoes.shtml)
Shared secrets aren’t really all that secret any longer.
Cory Doctorow (http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt)
We engineers get told to produce all kinds of things which are viewed as being desirable. But sometimes they are not feasible, and when we try to explain the reasons why, we soon get used to being told, “Don’t tell us why you can’t do it, tell us how you’re going to do it.” We get accused of being defeatist, unimaginative, gutless, stupid, uncreative, doctrinaire, inflexible, uncooperative. We get admonished to “think outside the box”. We are preached at about how we should be thinking “Yes” instead of “No”. We’re told to stop thinking about “problems”; we are told that we should refer to them as “opportunities”. (One engineering wag responded, “We’re surrounded by insurmountable opportunities.”) Which is to say that we get beaten about the head and shoulders with platitudes.
Steven Den Beste (http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/07/Justdoit.shtml)
Everything is easy for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
Engineering aphorism
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
A. B.
Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. A: Why is putting a reply at the top of the message frowned upon?
Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us
Simple guidelines to happiness: Work like you don’t need the money, love like your heart has never been broken and dance like no one can see you.
You May be a Fundamentalist If…
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards
I sense much NT in you. NT leads to Bluescreen. Bluescreen leads to downtime. Downtime leads to suffering. NT is the path to the darkside. Powerful Unix is.
Windows: “Where do you want to go today?” Linux: “Where do you want to go tomorrow?” FreeBSD: “Are you guys coming or what?”
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Confucius
I hear and I forget. I see and I believe. I do and I understand.
Confucius
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.
Confucius
People who need the government to enforce their religion must not have much faith in it. Or else they wouldn’t need the government to do so.
sconeu (/. User #64226)
Three or more: Use a ‘for’.
Charles Petzold
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
“Intellectual Property” is nowhere near as valuable as “Intellect”.
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity
Be sure brain is in gear before engaging mouth
We are the blog. Existance is futile. Prepare to be emulated.
User Friendly 2006–06–08
Passwords are like underwear. You don’t share them,
you don’t hang them on your monitor or under your keyboard,
you don’t email them, or put them on a web site,
and you must change them very often.
ὦ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
[O xein’, angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti têde keimetha tois keinon rhémasi peithomenoi.]
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, That here, obedient to her laws, we lie. (John Dryden’s translation of the inscription on the original Thermopylae memorial, by the poet Simonides of Ceos)
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
The invisible and the nonexistent look the same.
Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
… you really need to ascribe Microsoft actions equally to both malice AND incompetence.
Kelledin (on groklaw)
Analysts sell out - that’s their business model.
James Plamondon in “Effective Evangelism” from Microsoft
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups
I don’t have intolerance for Christianity — I simply lack any respect at all for that grand hodge-podge of delusions.
PZ Myers
Verstand is kennis getemperd met wijsheid. Understanding is knowledge tempered with wisdom.
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
Bruce Schneier [http://www.schneier.com/essay–124.html]
‘Belief’ softens the hardships, even can make them pleasant. In God man can find very strong consolation and support. Without Him, the man has to depend upon himself. To stand upon one’s own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child’s play. At such testing moments, vanity, if any, evaporates, and man cannot dare to defy the general beliefs, if he does, then we must conclude that he has got certain other strength than mere vanity.
Bhagat Singh [http://www.boloji.com/spirituality/051.htm]
Religion is “a different way of knowing” only if you consider being wrong “a different kind of right”.
Brownian [http://tfninsider.org/2009/12/21/the-year-in-quotes-science/]
At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
Freedom from Religion Foundation
Just saying “no” prevents teenage
pregnancy the way “Have a nice day”
cures chronic depression.
Jerry gesbbb@yahoo.com
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.
Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.
Benjamin Franklin
God is not great. But his followers are worse.
PZ Meyers
To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretences but your own.
Lionel Strachey
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. learn as if you were to live forever.
Mohandas Gandhi