Quotes

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

General

When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.
-- General George S. Patton, Jr.

Love

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
-- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that begins to bunch them.
-- H. L. Mencken
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
-- Albert Einstein
Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change.
-- Oscar Wilde
Falling in Love
When two people have been on enough dates, they generally fall in love. You can tell you're in love by the way you feel: your head becomes light, your heart leaps within you, you feel like you're walking on air, and the whole world seems like a wonderful and happy place. Unfortunately, these are also the four warning signs of colon disease, so it's always a good idea to check with your doctor.
-- Dave Barry

Mathematics

Engineering is the prostitution of mathematics.
-- Ryan Herbert
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Lord Ernest Rutherford
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
-- St. Augustine
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.
-- Albert Einstein

Einstein

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
-- Albert Einstein
Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.
-- Albert Einstein
God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
-- A. Einstein
I am a mathematician, not a philosopher.
-- Albert Einstein, upon confronting a Form 1040 personal income tax return
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast powers in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
-- Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-- Albert Einstein
The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
-- Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
-- Albert Einstein
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
-- Albert Einstein
We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.
-- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.
-- Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy.
-- Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
-- Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
God does not play dice with the universe.
-- Albert Einstein
I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.
-- Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics
If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
-- Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.
-- Albert Einstein
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute -- and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
-- Albert Einstein
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 mind.
-- Albert Einstein

Computers

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
-- Cal Keegan

H. L. Mencken

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
-- H. L. Mencken
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
-- H. L. Mencken
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way. Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality, and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation, and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
-- H. L. Mencken
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
-- H.L. Mencken
ink, n.: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.
-- H.L. Mencken
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- H.L. Mencken
The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
-- H.L. Mencken
'Tis more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.
-- H.L. Mencken
Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
-- H.L. Mencken
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
-- H.L. Mencken
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
-- H. L. Mencken
The public demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.
-- H.L. Mencken, "Prejudice"
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H.L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
-- Maxwell Bodenheim

Dave Barry

Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean, "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?
Answer: Yes.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
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"
I had no shoes and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet, so I took his shoes.
-- Dave Barry
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"

Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.
-- Lady Astor
Madam, if you were my wife, I would surely drink it.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
Sir, you are drunk!
-- Lady Astor
"And you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning."
-- Sir Winston Churchill