%%
 "I hate quotations.  Tell me what you know."
 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
 %%
 "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
 -- Abe Lincoln
 %%
 "If we can't fix it -- we'll fix it so nobody can."
 -- B. Gibbons
 %%
 "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves
  on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
 -- D. P. Barron
 %%
 Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two
 great outrages upon its naive self-love.  The first was when it realized that 
 our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system
 of a magnitude hardly conceivable...  The second was when biological research 
 robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and
 relegated him to a descent from the animal world.    
 -- Sigmund Freud  
 %%
 Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect."
 -- Keats
 %%
 "You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!"
 -- Bill
 %%
 "If you took all the sincerity in Hollywood and put it in the navel of a fruit
  fly, you'd still have room for three carraway seeds and a producer's heart."
  -- Fred Allen
  %%
 "Now, more than ever, it is evident that `good taste' only refers to that
  which reinforces the status quo." 
 -- Andre Peret
 %%
 "Computers are useless; they can only give answers."
 -- Picasso
 %%
 "Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the American people should
  not be frightened into believing that babies are being bred and eaten, that
  50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that
  satanists are taking over America's day care centers...  An unjustified
  crusade against those perceived as satanists could result in wasted resources,
  unwarranted damage to reputations, and disruption of civil liberties."
 -- Kenneth Lanning, head of the FBI's special unit in charge of
     investigating claims about satanic-cult crimes, in a report
     of his findings, June, 1989
 %%
 "What's the definition of a good flame?  One you agree with..."
 -- Karl Lehenbauer
 %%
 "I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
 -- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)
 %%
 "I do not fear computers.. I fear the lack of them."
 -- Isaac Asimov
 %%
 "Rebellion is like witchcraft. That's what it is, it's like witchcraft."
 -- Missouri State Rep. Jean Dixon, on labeling "offensive music". 
 	USA Today, March 20, 1990
 %%
 "I am made from the dust of the stars, the oceans flow in my veins."
 -- Rush, "Presto"
 %%
 "Reading legal mush can turn your brain to guacamole!" 
 -- Amiga ROM Kernel Manual
 %%
 "I think their experience with us may have helped their contemptuousness;
  the ignorance they come by naturally."
 --Chuck McManis (personal communication)
 %%
   Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings of the
 earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward the Cartha-
 ginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those brave people.
 Also we saw Caesar invade Britain -- "not that those barbarians had done him
 any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to confer the blessings
 of civilization upon their widows and orphans," as Satan explained.
   Next, Christianity was born.  Then ages of Europe passed in review before us,
 and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through those ages,
 "leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and other signs of the
 progress of the human race," as Satan observed.
   And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars -- all over 
 Europe, all over the world.  "Sometimes in the private interest of royal
 families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war
 started by the aggressor for any clean purpose -- there is no such war in the
 history of the race."
   "Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to the present, and you
 must confess that it is wonderful -- in its way.  We must now exhibit the 
 future."
   He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more
 devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
   "You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress.  Cain did 
 his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords;
 the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military
 organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a
 few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness
 of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian
 civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of 
 time."
 -- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
 %%
   "Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more
 desire to throw a stone than you had."
   "Satan!"
   "Oh, it's true.  I know your race.  It is made up of sheep.  It is governed
 by minorities, seldom or never by majorities.  It suppresses its feelings and
 its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.  Sometimes the
 noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.
 The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-
 hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive
 and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.  Think of it!  One
 kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps
 in iniquities which revolt both of them.  Speaking as an expert, I know that
 ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of
 witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics
 in the long ago.  And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted
 prejuidice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart
 into the harrying of a witch.  And yet apparently everybody hates witches and
 wants them killed.  Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make
 the most noise -- perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a
 determined front will do it -- and in a week all the sheep will wheel and 
 follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end."
 -- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
 %%
 "Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect
 in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for
 safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye.  These
 institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you,
 affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of
 minorities.  There was never a country where the majority of people were in
 their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
 -- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
 %%
 Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane -- like all dreams:
 a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad
 ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single 
 happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; 
 who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children
 to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children
 with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and
 invented hell -- mouths mercy and invented hell -- mouths Golden Rules, and
 forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who frowns
 upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then
 tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of
 honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with 
 altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
 -- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
 %%
 You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you
 possess that.  This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and
 trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities,
 evokers of the horse-laugh.  The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which
 exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision.  Will a day come when the
 race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and
 by laughting at them destroy them?  For your race, in its poverty, has
 unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter.  Power, money,
 persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug --
 push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter
 can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.  Against the assault of laughter
 nothing can stand.  You are always fussing and fighting with your other
 weapons.  Do you ever use that one?  No; you leave it lying rusting.  As a
 race, do you ever use it at all?  No; you lack sense and the courage."
 -- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
 %%
 "If you do everything, you'll win."
 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
 %%
     Catch a fly. Put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for
     5 to 10 minutes. This slows him down considerably, so he's easier to
     handle. While he's in there, make a miniature paper airplane with a
     wing-span about double that of the fly. Take the cool dude out of the
     ice-box and super glue his tiny feet onto the upper surface of the paper
     airplane. As he warms up and revives, he will begin doing that most
     natural of all fly activities: he will try to fly. If you have not made
     your little airplane too heavy, the fly's wing beats will be adequate
     for lift off. However, carrying the added weight quickly tires the fly,
     so in mid-air, he will stop beating his wings, and the airplane will
     soar downward. Seeing his plight causes the fly to once again attempt to
     fly, with the same result. Little bursts of energy as the plane gains
     altitude, alternated with slow downward glides. A thread super glued to
     the plane will keep your aerial circus in the same room, or you can take
     your new pet fly out for a walk, er, fly.
 -- Gary Benson (inc@fluke.tc.com)
 %%
    "Mathematicians stand on eaach other's shoulder,
     Computer Scientists stand on each other's toes."
 -- someone on the net (please email attribution), about look&feel lawsuits
 %%
 "I am thankful for one leg.  To limp is no disgrace --
  I may not be number one, but I can still run the race." 
 -- B.C.
 %%
 "God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be
  seen."
 - S. Hawking
 %%
 "Those who worked the hardest are the last to surrender."
 -- Gary Ward
 %%
 "They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true
 freak cannot be made.  A true freak must be born."
 -- K. Dunn, _Geek Love_
 %%
 "The raytracer of justices recurses slowly, but it renders exceedingly fine."
 -- Larry Phillips (lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca)
 %%
 "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of
 government!"
 -- M. Python
 %%
                           (####)
                         (#######)
                       (#########)
                      (#########)
                     (#########)
                    (#########)
    __&__          (#########) 
   /     \        (#########)   |\/\/\/|     /\ /\  /\               /\
  |       |      (#########)    |      |     | V  \/  \---.    .----/  \----. 
  |  (o)(o)       (o)(o)(##)    |      |      \_        /       \          /
  C   .---_)    ,_C     (##)    | (o)(o)       (o)(o)  <__.   .--\ (o)(o) /__.
   | |.___|    /____,   (##)    C      _)     _C         /     \     ()     / 
   |  \__/       \     (#)       | ,___|     /____,   )  \      >   (C_)   <
   /_____\        |    |         |   /         \     /----'    /___\____/___\ 
  /_____/ \       OOOOOO        /____\          ooooo             /|    |\
 /         \     /      \      /      \        /     \           /        \
   
 Homer          Marge           Bart            Lisa            Baby Maggie
 
                                 THE SIMPSONS
 %%
 "Jesus saves sinners... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!"
 -- John Wichers (wichers@husc4.HARVARD.EDU)
 %%
 "Perestroika: could it happen here?"
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "We walked on the moon -- you be polite." 
 -- Joni Mitchell
 %%
 "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch?  Next April?" 
 -- L. Mulloy
 %%
 "UNIX should be used as an adjective." 
 -- AT&T
 %%
 "The real problem with SDI is that it doesn't kill anybody."
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT blow the hatch!"
 "Roger....hatch blown!" 
 -- MAROONED
 %%
 "We have luck only with women -- not spacecraft!"
 -- R. Kremnev, builder of failed Soviet FOBOS probes
 %%
 "The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television?"
 -- Philip K. Dick
 %%
 "NASA Announces New Deck Chair Arrangement For Space Station Titanic."
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "Knowing when to optimize is as important as knowing how."
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will -- that will uncover a
 lot of things.  You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things...
 This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have
 nothing to do with ourselves." 
 -- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 6/23/72
 %%
 "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat."
 -- Thiokol management, 1/27/86
 
 "The filter has discreting sources."
 -- KSC FIDO, 1/28/86
 %%
 "When I was [in Canada] I found their jokes like their roads -- not very
  long and not very good, leading to a little tin point of a spire which
  has been remorselessly obvious for miles without seeming to get any
  nearer."
 -- Samuel Butler
 %%
 "Nature loves a vacuum.  Digital doesn't." 
 -- DEC sales letter
 %%
 "I'm a Leo.  Leos don't believe in this astrology stuff."
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
  1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies.
  1975-1989: nothing.
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "A man came into the the office one day and said he was a sailor.  We
 cured him of that." 
 -- Mark Twain, on his days as a doctor's apprentice in California
 %%
 "We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost... the right of
  free speech will be extinguished throughout the world."
 -- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 10/27/65
 %%
 "The country couldn't run without Prohibition.  That is the industrial fact."
 -- Henry Ford, 1929
 %%
 "We plan absentee ownership.  I'll stick to building ships."
 -- George Steinbrenner, 1973
 %%
 Canada: a few acres of snow.  
 -- Voltaire
 %%
 "There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level
  wouldn't cure. "
 -- Ross MacDonald
 %%
 "Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure."
 -- Karl Kraus
 %%
 "To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois."
 -- Jules Renard
 %%
 "War is like love; it always finds a way."
 -- Bertold Brecht
 %%
 "The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid
  moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads
  wondering if we might possibly have missed something."
 -- Gamel Abdel Nasser
 %%
 "Stalinism begins at home."
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "If the human mind were simple enough to understand,
 we'd be too simple to understand it."
 -- Pat Bahn
 %%
 "NASA Awards Acronym Generation System (AGS) Contract For Space Station Freedom"
 -- Tom Neff
 %%
 "US out of North America, NOW!!"
 -- Richard O'Rourke
 %%
 "Why don't the Japanese live in the mountains?  Certainly, they could;
  apparently they just don't want to."
 -- elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
 %%
 You are sunlight and I, moon
   Joined by the gods of fortune
 Midnight and high noon
   Sharing the sky
 We have been blessed, you and I
 -- MISS SAIGON
 %%
 "Democracy is also a form of worship.  It is the worship of Jackals by
  Jackasses."
 -- H. L. Mencken
 %%
 Chown up.  Chow down.
 %%
 "I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
 -- _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt
 %%
 "I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the
  whole American people which declared that their legislature
  should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
  or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a
  wall of separation between church and state."
 -- Thomas Jefferson, to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association in 1802
 %%
 "The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
 -- John Philpot Curran
 %%
 "Home is is the place where your computer lives and runs your life."
 -- Chrome Cowboy, sobiloff@thor.acc.stolaf.edu
 %%
 "I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years
  of maturity." 
 -- Albert Einstein
 %%
 "Don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see."
 -- Will Rogers
 %%
 "Do what you wanna, do what you will;
  Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill.
  And when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip
  To help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
     - Frank Zappa, "You Are What You Is"
 %%
 "Like the ski resort full of girls looking for husbands
  and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as 
  symmetrical as it might seem."  
 -- Alan McKay
 %%
 "If all men were brothers, would you want one to marry your sister?"
 is the title of a Theodore Sturgeon short story.
 %%
 "Not problem is too big it can't be run away from" 
 -- Linus
 %%
 "Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, o'er insectide waves of grain, and
  strip-mined mountain's majesty, above the asphalt plains!  America,
  America, man sheds his waste on thee!  And hides the pines, with
  billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!"
 -- George Carlin (?)
 %%
 "You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
  the continuing viability of Fortran."
 -- Alan Perlis
 %%
 "We fall into error if we attribute to strategy a power
   independent of tactical results."
 -- Karl von Clausewitz, On War
 %%
 Without a thorough understanding of tactics, there can be no effective
 strategy; therefore, any general must have a good foundation in the
 tactical aspects of warfare.  However, it is not necessary for a general
 to be an excellent swordsman, musketeer, or tank gunner.  It is sufficient
 to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and proper use of the forces
 available, and to know the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy.
 -- Phillip Harbison (alvitar@xavax.com)
 %%
 In article  reynolds@cochlea.bu.edu
 (John Reynolds) writes:
 >Robert Tilton Ministries
 >Box 819000 Dallas, TX 75381
 >* Complete Instructions on How to Receive your Miracle (That is, send
 >in "more money than you can afford", three times in 21 days)
 
 It really works!  We prayed for OpenWindows V2 to ship on schedule and it
 happened!  We didn't send him any money and a disk blew up on our server!
 Praise ``Bob''!
 
 -- david@eng.sun.com
 %%
 The following appeared in my MCI bill this month:
 
 MCI> President Bush is proclaiming July 22 as Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
 MCI> Family Appreciation Day, in honor of the 100th birthday of one of
 MCI> America's most beloved and respected citizens.  Throughout her life,
 MCI> family has been of utmost importance to Mrs. Kennedy.  Family 
 MCI> Appreciation Day calls upon Americans to rededicate themselves to family
 MCI> values and relationships...
 [ they then go on to encourage people to use the telephone a lot. ]
 
 This Sunday, I encourage the following activities:
 
 o Fornicate
 o Get a divorce
 o Shoot suction-cup darts at photos of JFK
 o Fornicate
 o Call up your long-distance operator and emit an ear-piercing shreik
 o Tell your parents how they've screwed you up for life
 o Assist a gay couple in adopting or conceiving
 o Use the word "Chappaquiddick" (sic?) in a sentence
 o Buy your pre-adolescent children a copy of Blue Boy
 o Fornicate
 o Spit on a rich person
 o Fornicate
 
 Thank you.
 
 - Erb (cooper@cs)
 Church of the Four-day Workweek
 %%
 "Poor dead, there's nothing between his ears."
 -- Margaret Thatcher, about Ronald Regan, 
 	in the 6/2/88 issue of The New York Times
 %%
 "Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by 
  a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly." 
 -- Orson Scott Card, Science Fiction author, Mormon, weenie
 %%
 "C is the assembly language of Tcl."
 -- Karl Lehenbauer (karl@hackercorp.com)
 
 "Assembly language is also available."
 -- Jordan Henderson  (jordan@hackercorp.com)
 %%
 "All modern American literature comes from one book
  by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
 -- Ernest Hemingway
 %%
 The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their
 own, resembling the affection of authors for their poems, or of parents for
 their children ... and hence they are very bad company, for they talk of
 nothing but the praises of wealth.
 -- Plato
 %%
 "I have been poor and I have been rich.  Rich is better."
 -- Sophie Tucker
 %%
 Mature software:  code old enough that for every bug fixed, one or more new
 bugs are created.
 -- Karl Lehenbauer
 %%
 "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead."
 -- W. Shakespeare, HAMLET
 %%
 "Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible -
 yea, and get the better of them."
 -- W. Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR
 %%
    "People these days are reluctant to read the canonical texts, but they
 love fiction. Not all fiction, mind you, for they are sick of exemplary themes
 and far prefer the obscene and fantastic. How low contemporary morals have
 sunk! Anyone concerned about public morality will want to retrieve the
 situation."
 -- Li Yu, in "The Carnal Prayer Mat" c. 1657 A.D.
 %%
                                 _
                                / \
                               |\_/|
                               |---|
                               |   |
                               |   |
                             _ |=-=| _
                         _  / \|   |/ \
                        / \|   |   |   ||\
                       |   |   |   |   | \>
                       |   |   |   |   |   \
                       | -   -   -   - |)   )
                       |                   /
                        \                 /
                         \               /
                          \             /
                           \           /
                            |         |
                            |         |
                            |         |
 
 -- Michael Westlund (d90-mwd@sigma.sm.luth.se)
 %%
 > The Independent quotes this from The Progressive, Sept. 1990:
 > 
 > "Louisiana State Rep. Carl Gunter, explaning why abortion should
 > not be permitted even when the pregnancy results from incest:
 > 'The way we get thoroughbred horses is through inbreeding.  With
 > incest, you could get super-smart kids.'"
 
 This undoubtedly explains State Representative Gunter's visibly high 
 intelligence...
 -- Lefty (lefty@twg.com)
 %%
 "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in
  the process he does not become a monster."
 -- Nietsche
 %%
 "Memory serves wise commanders."
 -- Tz'u-hsi, 638 AD
 %%
 It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
 -- Freeman Dyson
 %%
 "But then a new problem came up: the Jupiter probe, Galileo, was going to
  use a power supply that runs on heat generated by radioactivity. If the
  shuttle carrying Galileo failed, radioactivity could be spread over a
  large area."
 -- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
 %%
 "If a guy tells me the probability of failure is 
  1 in 10E5, I know he's full of crap." 
 -- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
 %%
 Congresswoman:  Well, Mr. Dallas... we've heard your smut masquerading as
 songs... and we've heard how teen prostitution pregnancy, drug use, cults,
 runaways, suicide and poor hygiene are sweeping this nation.  We thought you
 might like to share with the committee any particular causes you might see
 for those latter problems...
 
 Steve Dallas:  I dunno.  Maybe the proliferation of narrow, suffocating
 zealotry masquerading as parenting in this country.
 
 -- Bloom County
 %%
 "In Germany they first came for the Communists, 
    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
 Then they came for the Jews, 
    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
 Then they came for the trade unionists,
    and I didn't speak up becaues I wasn't a trade unionist.
 Then they came for the Catholics,
    and I didn't speak up becaue I was a Protestant.  
 Then they came for me -
    and by that time no one was left to speak up."
 
 -- Pastor Martin Niemoller 
 %%
 "You can't get snot off of a suede jacket."
 -- Lenny Bruce
 %%
 "A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
  He follows a lifestyle we don't endorse,
  He drinks the blood of a sheep, by force,   
  The vampire horse, Count Ed!"               
  -- Ron (lev0@midway.uchicago.edu)
 %%
 [Pornography] causes premarital intercourse, perversion, masturbation in
 boys, wantonness in girls... Attention is given to sensationalists such
 as Kinsey and Eberhard... who, finding fellow travelers in erstwhile
 respectable media, manage to disseminate, directly and indirectly,
 their absurd and dirty bleatings and pagan ideas.  It seems strange to
 me that we credit -- I should say that our mass media credit -- the
 unestablished generalities of a few so-called experts, but ignore the
 overwhelming testimony of the true experts like J. Edgar Hoover.
 -- Charles H. Keating, Jr., former anti-porn activist, the financier
     behind the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal (his anti-porn organization
     got in trouble in 1962 (!) for spending over 90% of the funds they
     raised)
 %%
 "If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected
  within you is destroyed."
 -- Kahlil Gibran, 1923
 %%
 "What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that
  they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.  The evil is not what
  they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
 -- Robert F. Kennedy
 %%
 In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people
 who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would
 not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the
 importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the
 reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade
 others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose
 of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority.
 -- Machiavelli
 %%
 All religions have in common the periodical childlike surrender to a
 Provider or providers who dispense earthly fortune as well as spiritual
 health; some demonstrations of man's smallness by means of reduced
 posture and humble gesture, the admission in prayer and song of misdeeds,
 of misthoughts, and of evil intentions; fervent appeal for inner uni-
 fication by divine guidance; and finally, the insight that individual
 trust must become part of the ritual practice of man, and must become
 a sign of trustworthiness in the community.
 -- psychologist Erik Erikson
 %%
 When one studies the biographies of the founders and leaders of the various
 religions, one cannot help but be struck by the psychotic -- or at least
 extremely abnormal -- behavior that has characterized so many of them.
 Luther, Wesley, and Loyola had hallucinations ("visions").  St. Theresa
 almost certainly was a hysteric.  The book _The Psychotic Personality_,
 by Leon J. Saul and Silas L. Warner, devotes considerable space to the
 psychotic personalities of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science),
 Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Mohammed, and the Rev. Jim Jones...
 It seems significant that the founder of Christianity itself, St. Paul,
 also suffered from epilepsy.
 -- Frank Zindler, "Religiosity as a Mental Disorder," American Atheist magazine,
    April 1988, p. 27
 %%
 "For the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic
  is fine.  To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a
  church teaching that you must also vote according to that -- that's
  not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment."
 -- Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy
 %%
 "Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process."
 -- Barry Goldwater
 %%
 "If we are to begin packaging ourselves as boxes of cereal, Democracy will
  die... for you could not win the presidency without proving unworthy of
  the job."
 -- Adlai Stevenson
 -- 
 -- uunet!sugar!karl
 -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018
 %%
 %%
 "Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking
  the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe,
  from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man."
 -- George Gaylord Simpson
 %%
 "We must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend
  that we have nothing to express."
 -- George Santayana, _Soliloquies In England_
 %%
 Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by
 or rather, things that are!
 -- Plutarch
 %%
 "Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at last."
 -- Martin Luther King
 %%
 "The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if
  any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents
  as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false."
 -- Saint Thomas Aquinas
 %%
 "Ignorance transcends architecture."
 -- James Gaskin
 %%
 "The C committee took something that wasn't broken, and tidied it up without 
  breaking it."
 -- Dennis Ritchie (dmr@alice.UUCP), about ANSI C standard X3J11
 %%
 "Committees do harm merely by existing."
 -- Freeman Dyson
 %%
 I think the best way I've heard this put is "Pascal gives you a water pistol
 filled with distilled water.  C not only gives you a loaded .357, it points
 it at your head as a default.  Why do you think Pascal is taught in school?
 And which would you rather have when there was a hungry bear in the area?"
 -- Jim Harkins (jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP)
 %%
 "So far from God, so close to the United States" 
 -- Old Mexican proverb
 %%
 In science, right conduct consists of evaluating evidence honestly and
 according to the canons of scientific reasoning.  To misrepresent the
 evidence and the criteria of judgement is not merely to provide
 misinformation; it is to set an example of dishonesty.  Telling lies
 to naive and trusting young persons is bad.  Doing so for the purpose
 of proselytizing is worse.
 -- biologist Michael T. Ghiselin
 %%
 Our educational systems may very well be on the threshold of a new and
 even gloomier Dark Age of the 20th and 21st centuries, unless the anti-
 intellectualism and confused thinking creationists produce is overcome."
 -- Reverend James Skehan
 %%
 In article <10796@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
 >I'm not going to be as kind to FICC in general as you have been.
 >Something is wrong there.  These three semiliterate fanboys send dozens
 >of messages a day, fewer than half of which are about anything in
 >particular.  I haven't had a kill file since Weiner left, but I've been
 >sorely tempted to use one to avoid seeing anything from ficc.
 
 However, in article <10767@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes:
 >Kill files are an expression of resentment by the unmemorable or
 >untalented against the memorable and talented.  Your appearance in kill
 >files merely marks the fact that you have more than once tried to make
 >people think, when they really would rather not.  It is an honor.
 
 Will the real Tim Maroney please stand up?
 
 -- Mike Van Pelt (mvp@v7fs1.UUCP)
 %%
 "'To the Workers of the world, I am sorry.' -- Karl Marx"
 -- Seen on the side of an East German factory
 %%
 "Faith" can be defined as "any man's hope that the human spirit is capable
 of understanding"; that anything actually matters in the larger
 universe; and that understanding anything could be important outside
 of our own selfish whims and desire to survive. ...and somehow, because
 it is important, understanding can go on without us, waiting only
 to be rediscovered by the future, or at worst, pissed away, in spite
 of all our prayers, and work, and suffering.
 
 Every expression of the human spirit is an act of faith.
 -- Ellyn Mustard (mustard@ficc.ferranti.comm)
 %%
 "We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased,
  frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion."
 -- Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
 %%
 "I don't see the problem.  Satan is a Christian God.  Satanists are a
  kind of off-beat christians.  They don't need a group of their own --
  they belong in some christian group, or talk.religion.misc at most."
 -- Thomas Gramstad (bfu@ifi.uio.no)
 %%
 "'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only *doubt* which will bring mental
  emancipation."
 --Anton LaVey
 %%
 "I don't even know what street Canada is on."
 -- Al Capone
 %%
 "This will be dynamically handled, possibly correctly, in 4.1."
 -- Dan Davison on streams configuration in SunOS 4.0
 %%
 Resolved, that the 67th General Convention affirm the glorious ability of
 God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this
 affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the
 "Creationist" movement...
 -- from a 1982 resolution of the Episcopal Church
 %%
 "The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as 
  rather silly.  I would rather use them to mimic something better."
 --Edsger Dijkstra
 %%
 "Last night I watched the news and the end of the broadcast showed numerous
  changes favorable for the people (e.g., Rumania, Berlin Wall, etc.).  My
  fiancee and I turned to each other and said ``No images from the US.''"
 -- Mike Shaff (shaff@elements.rpal.com)
 %%
 Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,
 I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
 -- Meatloaf
 %%
 "The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle: they're on 
 TV!"
 -- Homer Simpson
 %%
 "What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites
  assembled there!"
 -- Mark Twain
 %%
 "The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of
  respect and joy in each others life.
  Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
 -- Richard Bach
 %%
 Gort, klaatu birada nikto.
 %%
 "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find
  something in them to hang him."
 -- Cardinal de Richelieu
 %%
 A host is a host from coast to coast
 And no one will talk to a host that's close
 Unless the host (that isn't close)
 is busy, hung or dead.
 -- David Lesher (wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu)
 %%
 "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
 -- G. K. Chesterton 
 %%
 "Lobbyists threatening to withhold campaign contributions from 
  lawmakers who don't support their special-interest causes could 
  be violating bribery laws, Colorado House Speaker Bev Bledsoe 
  warned yesterday." 
 -- The Denver Post, 3 May 1990, p. 1B 
 %%
 "Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
 -- Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's _Time Enough For Love_
 %%
 "The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference
  between lightning and a lightning bug."
 -- Mark Twain
 %%
 "If we do not succeed, then we face the risk of failure."
 -- Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States
 %%
 "Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children."
 -- Miriam Robbins
 %%
 "Hawaii is a part of the United States that is an island and is right here."
 -- Dan Quayle, while in Hawaii
 %%
 "A killer stalks the halls of my high school. Innocent cheerleaders die
 by knife. Teachers lock the classroom doors. I must find him, or I'll
 flunk."
 -- From a poem by Peggy Nadramia
 %%
 "We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written."
 -- Robert Gould Shaw, abolitionist
 %%
 "Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."
 -- Igor Stravinsky
 %%
 "Well, Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable,
  And Lightness has a call that's hard to hear."
 -- Indigo Girls
 %%
 "Once I was a tadpole, in the beginning of the begin;
  Then I was a toadfrog with my tail tucked in.
  Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree;
  Now I'm a professor with a Ph.D."
 --Anonymous creationist's view of evolution
 %%
 "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything."
 -- F. Jeff Stiles, Southern Baptist preacher
 %%
 "We all say so, so it must be true."
 -- the Bandar-log (monkey tribe), in Rudyard Kipling's _Jungle Book_
 %%
 "Credo, quia absurdum est."  [I believe, because it is absurd.]
 -- Tertullian, Roman lawyer, theologian and misogynist; man of questionable 
       judgement
 %%
 JESUS SAVES, but Clones 'R' Us makes backups!
 -- William Lewis (wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu)
 %%
 "Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
 -- Joseph Campbell
 %%
 In article <2267@speedy.mcnc.org> spl@duck.ncsc.org (Steve Lamont) writes:
 >I hate "me too" postings 
 
 Me too.
 
 -- Charleen Stoner, charleen@ADS.COM
 %%
 "As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been
  used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications."
 -- Dave Parnas, Communications of the ACM (33, 6 June 1990 p.636) 
 %%
 "The alternative to mutual trust, which is indeed a risky gamble, is the
  security of the police state."
 -- Alan Watts
 %%
 "And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible
  were used to beat plowshares into swords..."
 -- Alan Watts
 %%
 "Excuse me, Worker, I'll just be a nanosecond."
 -- a computer, from Firesign Theater's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus"
 %%
 "No wife of *mine* is doing any dishes.  That's what we had the kid for."
 -- from Deathlok comics #1
 %%
 "The biggest growth industry in UNIX is promoting standards."
 -- Rikki Kirzner, Dataquest.
 %%
 "The world is coming to an end.  Please log off."
 -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com)
 %%
 "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I'm
 beginning to believe it."
 -- Clarence Darrow
 %%
 "Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!"
 -- from Fiddler On The Roof
 %%
 As we anarchists say: "There's no government like no government."
 -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)
 %%
 "I woke up this morning, and I realized that somebody had broken into my 
  apartment, stolen all my things and replaced them with exact duplicates.
  I asked my roommate if he noticed anything, and he said, 'Who are you?'"
 
 "The other day I.... No, that wasn't me."
 
 "My friend Bob is a radio DJ, and when he walks under a bridge, you can't hear
 him talk."
 
 "My father built a quicksand box in our back yard.  I was an only child, 
 eventually."
 
 -- comedian Steven Wright
 %%
 "Just think, IBM and DEC in the same room, and we did it."
 -- Ken Thompson, quoted by Dennis Ritchie
 %%
 In article <649.2686213d@desire.wright.edu> nyoung@desire.wright.edu (Nils R. 
 Bull Young) writes:
 |   I consider this to be a form of censorship of my access to the
 | free exchange of information and thus a First Amendment question.
 
 ...
 In common terms you can write a book, and no one can stop you or tell
 you what to write, but no one else is required to publish the book, or
 to read it. You can raise specious issues in net postings, but no one
 is required to agree, to carry your postings, or even read them. If
 everyone on the net adds you to their KILL file, you have no recourse.
 If every site checks incoming postings and blows your stuff away,
 thet's their right.
 
   Don't worry, a few individuals may ignore you, but the bulk of the net
 will read every word, if only to disagree.
 
 -- Bill Davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
 %%
 "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
 -- anon
 %%
 "A lecture is where the notes of the professor become the notes
  of the student without passing through the mind of either one."
 -- anon
 %%
 "Aging is bad, but consider the alternative."
 -- anon
 %%
 "Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent
  is armed."
 -- East Texas Proverb
 %%
 "Bidet?  Try washing your whole body."
 -- anon
 %%
 Baby carriage bumper sticker:   ``POO-POO HAPPENS!''  
 -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com)
 %%
 "Don't get married.  Find a woman you hate and buy her a house."
 -- anon
 %%
 "Football combines the worst elements of America:  Mass violence
  punctuated by committee meetings."
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
  courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
 -- Reinhold Niebuhr
 %%
 "Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and 
  Violence."
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "Gun control:  Hitting what you aim at."  
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "Happiness is not a destination.  It's the trip."
 -- anon
 %%
 "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
 %%
 "I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle it's
  much too confining."
 -- Lilly Tomlin
 %%
 "I just couldn't convince Texans that Dukakis was Greek for Bubba."
 -- Lloyd Benson
 %%
 "I will defend to your death my right to my opinion."
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?"
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "If life had a vomit meter, we'd be off the scale."
 -- Joe Bob Briggs
 %%
 "Indecision is the key to flexibility."
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "Inferiority complex:  a conviction by a jury of your fears."
 -- anon
 %%
 "Is this bullshit or fertilizer?"
 -- Author Unknown
 %%
 "It isn't easy being a fat narcissist."
 -- Jackie Gleason
 %%
 "It's better to be silent and thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt."
 -- Abraham Lincoln
 %%
 "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
 -- Andre Guide
 %%
 "Love is always having to say I'm sorry."
 -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com)
 %%
 "Managing senior programmers is like herding cats."
 -- Dave Platt
 %%
 "Never try to catch two frogs with one hand."
 -- Chinese Proverb
 %%
 "Neurotic: Self-taut person."
 -- Author Unknow

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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