Miscellaneous Quotes

"So why don't you go home?"
Dink smiled crookedly. "Because I can't give up the game." He tugged at the fabric of his flash suit, which lay on the bunk beside him. "Because I love this."
-- Ender Wiggin, Dink Meeker, Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)

"Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."
-- Carl Schurz, before the Anti-Imperialistic Conference in 1899

"Please choke on a bucket of cocks. Thank you."
-- jwz dismissing an asshole 26 May 2003

"How many phone calls do I have to make to get me to the person who knows how to turn a Datsun into a MOAB?"
-- Warren Ellis, brainstorming on a truly useful version of Friendster 23 May 2003

"Most normal kids get visits from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Clause. Not I. I get visits from the Trojan Man. I came home this morning to find a pack of condoms laying on my bed. I love my parents."
-- Jason Markovitz, on the eve of his departure for the Bahamas 22 Mar 2003

"CSI is about invincible robots hunting you down with implacable determination from the analysis of the faded and ephemeral fart you released at the crime scene."
-- Warren Ellis on his Bad Signal mailing list 20 Jan 2002

"Then it occurred to me that I was standing there pissing on Nancy Reagan's life work, and that made me feel better about it."
-- Jamie Zawinski on "Just Say No" urinal puck holders Jul 2002

"Adults are just obsolete children, and to hell with them."
-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

"Haley Joel Osment is SUPERB--he deserves a medal, a monument, and a cookie for his acting"
-- Ian Serotkin in an everything2 node about "A.I." 30 Jun 2001

"Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet."
-- Bruce Schneier, on the inevitable failure of attempts by the entertainment industry and governments to stop the copying of digital media 15 May 2001

"Anywhere I can buy a new mousepad, a bottle of hair dye, a rifle, ski mask, bullets, new york strip steak, and a pair of silver faux silk boxer shorts at 3:30am is rad in my book."
-- Juliet, in an everything writeup on Super Wal-Mart I wonder if she's ever been to Meijer? Does Meijer sell guns too? 2 Mar 2000

"There is far too little joy in the world, and some of the best of it came from Douglas Adams."
-- Joe Straczynski on the occasion of Adams' death 14 May 2001

"Where innocent, sexually ignorant children go to die in boiling vats of hormones, which are then used to create adolescents. Sort of like Logan's Run, but it ain't fiction."
-- pulp, in an everything writeup on puberty 13 Nov 1999

"The difference between us old farts and those younger bands is they're into jerking off, and we're into fucking."
-- Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), during the making of 1989's "Pump"

"Going forward, and in the interests of bringing closure to this pressing issue, I'd suggest Mr. Ylonen piss up a Rope(TM)-brand rope."
-- Mike Muise, on Slashdot, addressing Tatu Ylonen's call for the OpenSSH project to stop using the SSH "trademark" 14 Feb 2001

"Usenet is the equivalent of an old west saloon. Certain strong personalities tend to dominate, and every so often somebody says something that becomes the electronic equivalent of that moment when the piano player stops playing... people look over their shoulders slowly... one guy slowly gets up... and there's the sound of chairs being pushed hurriedly away and the stampeding of non-combatants getting out of the way. The only difference is, imagine the two duelists facing each other... and everybody else in the bar is tossing spitballs at them from corners of the room."
-- Peter David

"A Porsche? Candy-apple red? No. They should be going so fast the visible light spectrum shifts."
-- Jill Barrett

"It means your opinions are so wrongheaded that I am sarcastically offering you the opportunity to perform oral sex on me. Hope that helps."
-- Jamie Zawinski, explaining the meaning of "oh, blow me" to someone on the Evolution list, April 2000

"To hook up with chicks
You need to hone your "m4d sk1llz"
And stop jerking off."
-- Anonymous Coward [slashdot] IRCnet Servers To Strike... 6 Apr 2000

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
-- US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the majority, West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette, 1943, forbidding forcibly requiring school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance

"In the 80's guys stuffed socks in their underwear. Now guys tweak their jpgs in an image editing program. I think that qualifies as progress."
-- John Halcyon Styn, commenting on this year's SXSW Interactive Award Show 14 Mar 2000

"Perpetual childhood is not so much about avoiding responsibility, maturity, or even ignoring the evils of the world. It is an attempt to perpetuate the mental freedom that is steadily traded for physical freedom as people grow older (in a society), preserve and further both in tandem. It is trying to never lose the wonder and exitement of everything good and pleasant in the world, big or small. There is a degree of being carefree and innocence, but not through avoidance, ignorance, self deception, or living in a dream world- that would defeat the goal. Living for what feels good at heart instead of what is deemed and supposed to be desireable, not getting dragged down trying to live someone elses dream. It in fact is exactly laughing and playing as an adult."
-- "Pukesick" writing on Everything 6 Jan 2000

"At first I was enjoying myself. There's something sacred about a man's first blowjob. It's sort of like a Bar Mitzvah, only without all the family members, without the reading of the Torah, without the gifts, and it involves some girl with your dick in her mouth. But the feeling of becoming a man is much the same, and in both cases you get to dance the Horah and eat cake (if you're lucky)."
-- Victor Andersen of fishdot.org, recounting his first hummer

"Zero tolerance really means zero thought."
-- Jesse Jackson 14 Nov 1999

"I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset 'cos they act like people. Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive."
-- Adam Young, the Antichrist, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

"If you know you're going to get a bucket of water in the face, untuck your shirt first."
-- Bill Nye, giving advice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's commencement May 1999

"It's my feeling that people who don't vote should shut up"
-- Bill Nye, RPI commencement May 1999

"Keep in mind the environment that these two poor souls were in that brought them to the breaking point--and took them one whole year in the process of actually snapping--which is the bottom end of a caste system that makes the Hindu lifestyle look like the proverbial level playing ground for all."
-- David Gonterman, in a message in a discussion forum on Littleton

"Umm, of course we spend most of our time behind computers--very few people get to be hackers by hanging out in a dojo."
-- Slashdot's Rob (CmdrTaco) Malda, commenting on yet another media story about "hackers" written by a lamer 13 Apr 1999

"They aren't used to paying libertarian millionaires to do shitwork in the service of authoritarianism; we don't come cheap."
-- John Gilmore, on producing a handful of messages from years' worth of high-volume mail list traffic to satisfy a federal subpoena in the United States v. Carl Johnson case 12 Apr 1999

"It makes sense that guilt and dicks follow each other, since Catholic girls get laid so much."
-- suck's Polly Esther, responding to a letter in The Fish 7 Apr 1999

"Believe me, the allure of growing up is one of the biggest frauds perpetuated by those who have already sold out & done so."
-- John Walker 16 Mar 1999

"Unix doesn't have a monopoly on good ideas, it just owns most of them."
-- Alan Cox, A Brave New World, 4 Mar 1999

"Everything I did in life that was worthwhile I caught hell for."
-- former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren

"As the company grew, it began to attract a different... caliber of people; for lack of a better term, let's call them ``losers.''"
-- Jamie Zawinski, on the growth of Netscape

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
-- Daniel Webster, 3 Jun 1834

"lost HTML
 oh where has your homepage gone?
 I do not know or care."
-- Dave Terrell's 404 response 2 Dec 97

"Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarass him?"
-- Tom Clancy

"I don't do .INI, .BAT, .DLL or .SYS files.
I don't assign apps to files.
I don't configure peripherals or networks before using them.
I have a computer to do all that.
I have a Macintosh, not a hobby."
-- Fritz Anderson, seen on the Macinsider web site 21 Oct 97

"Isn't it ultimately much, much cooler to be a brilliant iconoclast rather than only wondering where you want to go today?"
-- Don Crabb's Don Direct column 18 Oct 97

"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users,"
-- Microsoft VP of Platforms and Applications Paul Maritz, quoted in InfoWorld

"I don't hate the Internet, it's just that it's the same fucking assholes who were fucking illiterates before, it's just now they have COMPUTERS"
-- Harlan Ellison

"...we know that we're in the twilight of Western Civilization when Pauly Shore becomes a star."
-- Harlan Ellison, commenting on the abject stupidity of modern television executives. I-CON XVI, 5 Apr 97

"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be."
-- Col. Hyrum Graff (Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card)

"We have to go. I'm almost happy here."
"So stay."
"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
-- Andrew (Ender) Wiggin, Valentine Wiggin (Ender's Game)

"The company that controls computerized pictures of naked breasts," said Marc Andreessen, Netscape senior vice-president of technology, "is the company that will control the next century."
-- From The Onion "Experts Predict On-Line World of 21st Century To Feature More Breasts" 18 Dec 96

"This is what you call hubris. Not arrogance, hubris. It's beyond that. Power people who just are so arrogant they just don't care. They disdain... accepted methods of doing things. They assume we're all stupid including you-- I mean... the press. They just assume that. That's hubris. That's unyielding arrogance. That's arrogance gone wild... Insane."
-- Harold Washington, Mayor of Chicago, sometime between 1983 and 1988

"to be nobody but yourself - in a world which is trying its hardest, night and day, to make you everyone else - is to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight; and never stop fighting"
-- e.e. cummings

"How about that Rostenkowski? I think he's going to make somebody a great wife in prison."
-- Steve Dahl 10 Apr 96

"We bundle a number of useful tools from other vendors as part of the CW CD; this frees us from having to reinvent perfectly good wheels and to focus on our mission of giving you butt-kicking development tools."
-- Metrowerks CodeWarrior Home Page

"The box routes, of course (this is cisco, the on-site coffee machines route)"
-- Tim Kolar, commserver development, Cisco Systems, Inc.

"I would love to be quoted as being hated by Martha Siegel. That would make my day."
--- Electronic Frontier Foundation chief legal counsel Mike Godwin

"Now I know how the members of Richard Nixon's enemies list must have felt. It's quite an honor to be hated by Martha Siegel"
-- MIT Media Lab's Ron Newman

"I used to feel like I was a flea on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I feel I might be a small yapping poodle on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex."
-- Phil Zimmerman, on releasing "Pretty Good Privacy" (PGP)

"The light at the end of your tunnel is just me coming the other way."
-- Larry Wall 15 Feb 95

In article <3esdra$l60@agate.berkeley.edu> justin@physics20 (Justin R.
Bendich) writes:
: Well, that explains your attitude.  Now, wait ten years until perl17 is out,
: then go back and try to figure out what that #@$!ing perl5 script does...
"Don't be silly. Perl 17 will explain it to you, and then take questions."
-- Larry Wall, January 1995

"(You know, one could get the feeling that awk is basically incompatible with C.)"
-- Larry Wall, in the perl5 perltrap manpage

"Your stdio isn't very std. Your stdio looks like linux."
-- Larry Wall, in the Perl5.00 Configure script

"Perl 4 is the best thing since Flav-O-Ice. Perl 5 blows Perl 4 away."
-- Mike Gebis <m-gebis@uiuc.edu>

"I have three words for you: I'm proud of you"
-- Doug Collins, then-head coach, Chicago Bulls, Glenbrook North H.S. (Northbrook, IL) Loyalty Day assembly, September 1992

"Funny how well you can get to know a girl by just sleeping with her."
-- Dan Shulman (.plan file)

"> This made me wonder, suddenly: can telnet be written in perl?
Of course it can be written in Perl. Now if you'd said nroff, that would be more challenging..."
-- Larry Wall

"And yes, I did once say I wasn't going to do any more development [on Perl 5.] Just think of this as a very large bug fix."
-- Larry Wall


Jason Lindquist -- <linky@see.figure1.net>