—Zaphod Beeblebrox (Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of
the Universe
%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of
the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure
and reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days,
spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were
real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small
furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown
terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had
split
before—and thus was the Empire forged.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow
sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is
an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are
a pretty neat idea...
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy"
%
Hey, this is terrific! Someone down there is trying to kill us!
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
—Douglas Adams
%
Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to
dinner.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I
am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis.
—Zaphod Beeblebrox (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy")
%
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
—Douglas Adams
%
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up
where I intended to be.
—Douglas Adams
%
I seem to be having tremendous difficulties with my lifestyle.
—Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy)
%
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to
judge?
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
I'm a great fan of science, you know.
—Slartibartfast (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy)
%
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to
consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family
anatidae on our hands.
—Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency"
%
If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a
mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for
themselves.
—Douglas Adams, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
%
If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught
and shot now.
—Zaphod Beeblebrox (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy")
%
If you'd call it a robot. It's more a sort of electronic sulking
machine.
—Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy)
%
In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people
angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
—Douglas Adams
%
INFINITE: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger
than that, in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size,
real "wow, that's big" time. Infinity is so big that by comparison,
bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal
multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get
across here.
—Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with
potatoes.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
"It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
—Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy")
%
Life...is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips
in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
—Douglas Adams
%
Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because
he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so
on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water
having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same
reasons.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Now this is going to be your first day out on a strange new planet, so I
want you all wrapped up snug and warm, and no playing with any naughty
bug-eyed monsters.
—Eddy the Shipboard Computer (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy")
%
One always overcompensates for disabilities. I'm thinking of having my
entire body surgically removed.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
"So we're not home and dry," he said. "We could not even be said," replied
Ford, "to be home and vigorously towelling ourselves off."
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly
big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug
store, but that's just peanuts to space.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Suddenly, he realized what the answer to his problem was, and it was this,
that something very weird was happening; and if something very weird was
happening, he thought, he wanted it to be happening to him.
—Douglas Adams, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
%
The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from
most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been
with trees.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The history of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For
instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we
eat?" the second by the question "Why do we eat?" and the third by the
question "Where shall we have lunch?"
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest
possibility of crossing my mind.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of
pinky russet.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
—Douglas Adams
%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what
the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams
%
This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
—Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy")
%
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of
the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely
concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd
because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were
unhappy.
—Douglas Adams
%
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
—Douglas Adams
%
Time is bunk.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable
prerogative of your working thinkers. Any machine goes and actually FINDS
it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? I mean, what's the use of
our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God
if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next
morning?
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't
cope with is therefore your own problem.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
What a depressingly stupid machine.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
—Douglas Adams
%
You're turning into a penguin. Stop it.
—Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
Then here's to the City of Boston,
The town of the cries and the groans.
Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
—Franklin Pierce Adams
%
The best you get is an even break.
—Franklin Pierce Adams
%
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence
stops.
—Henry Adams
%
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words
are slippery and thought is viscous.
—Henry Adams
%
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it
accumulates in the form of inert facts.
—Henry Adams
%
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organization of hatreds.
—Henry Adams
%
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
—Henry Adams
%
All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest
would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
—John Quincy Adams
%
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid
people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
—Scott Adams
%
The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base
ten counting system and likes round numbers.
—Scott Adams
%
There's no merit badge for world conquest. We only work for merit
badges.
—Scott Adams, "Dilbert"
%
Baby: an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
—Elizabeth Adamson
%
Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
—John Addison
%
The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain
esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good
breeding
—Joseph Addison
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
—Alfred Adler
%
Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.
—Roy Adzak
%
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
—Aesop
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
—Aesop
%
Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.
—Aesop
%
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop
%
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
—Aesop
%
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
—Aesop
%
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest
about it.
—James Agate, British film and drama critic
%
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
—Howard Aiken
%
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible
warning.
—Catherine Aird
%
But such fine words butter no parsnips.
—Robert Aitken
%
Friday is like the giant afternoon of the weekend.
—Crystal Akers '01
%
I'm losing my mind. Oh, there it is.
—Crystal Akers '01, puttering about the room
%
If I promised you the moon and the stars, would you believe it?
—Alan Parsons Project
%
Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
—Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
—Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle if it is lightly greased.
—Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money
to do it right.
—Kurt Herbert Alder
%
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his
excreta.
—Brian Aldiss
%
[Dallben] learned that the lives of men are short and filled with pain,
yet each one a priceless treasure, whether it be that of a prince or a
pig-keeper. And at the last, the book taught him that while nothing was
certain, all was possible.
—Lloyd Alexander, "The Foundling and Other Stories"
%
Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided
at all costs.
—N. Alexander
%
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.
—Conte Vittorio Alfieri
%
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted
thirty years of his life.
—Muhammad Ali
%
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.
—Muhammad Ali
%
There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.
—Muhammad Ali
%
It is necessary to have purpose.
—Alice #1, "I, Mudd," "Star Trek"
%
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great
moral crises maintain their neutrality.
—Dante Alighieri
%
We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new
world. We will see it when we believe it.
—Saul Alinsky
%
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known,
then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
—Fred Allen
%
California is a fine place to live—if you happen to be an orange.
—Fred Allen
%
Committee: a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
—Fred Allen
%
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for
stars.
—Fred Allen
%
I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he
can easily buy one for a few dollars.
—Fred Allen
%
Most of us spend the first 6 days of each week sowing wild oats, then we
go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
—Fred Allen
%
What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?
—Fred Allen
%
A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is
last year.
—Marty Allen
%
Never comment on a woman's rear end. Never use the words "large" or
"size" with "rear end." Never. Avoid the area altogether. Trust me.
—Tim Allen
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree"—probably because it's so
hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
—Woody Allen
%
Don't knock masturbation—it's sex with someone I love.
—Woody Allen
%
Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
—Woody Allen
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
—Woody Allen
%
His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed
moral bankruptcy.
—Woody Allen
%
I am two with nature.
—Woody Allen
%
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve
immortality through not dying.
—Woody Allen
%
I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
—Woody Allen
%
I took a speed-reading course and read "War and Peace" in twenty
minutes. It involves Russia.
—Woody Allen
%
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked
into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
—Woody Allen
%
I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead—not sick, not
wounded—dead.
—Woody Allen
%
I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard
enough to find your way around Chinatown.
—Woody Allen
%
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
—Woody Allen
%
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the
worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an
underachiever.
—Woody Allen
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in
my name at a Swiss bank.
—Woody Allen
%
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
—Woody Allen
%
Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a
very comforting thought—particularly for people who can never
remember where they have left things.
—Woody Allen
%
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a
tune.
—Woody Allen
%
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable,
as one's hat keeps blowing off.
—Woody Allen
%
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones
slept better...while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much
more.
—Woody Allen
%
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
—Woody Allen
%
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it's all over
much too soon.
—Woody Allen
%
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads
to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us
pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
—Woody Allen
%
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
—Woody Allen
%
Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have
any fun at all.
—Woody Allen
%
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
—Woody Allen
%
Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over
again. God—I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.
—Woody Allen
%
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
—Woody Allen
%
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and
spends very little on office supplies.
—Woody Allen
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's
one of the best.
—Woody Allen
%
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
—Woody Allen
%
The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it
alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
—Woody Allen
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much
sleep.
—Woody Allen
%
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening
with an insurance salesman?
—Woody Allen
%
Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only
food: frequently there must be a beverage.
—Woody Allen
%
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
—Woody Allen
%
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
—Woody Allen
%
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
—Woody Allen
%
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse,
what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
—Woody Allen
%
Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?
—Woody Allen
%
If you don't control your mind, someone else will.
—John Allston
%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
—Noelie Altito
%
What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.
—Robert Altman
%
I don't really trust a sane person.
—Lyle Alzado
%
I never met a man I didn't want to fight.
—Lyle Alzado, professional football lineman
%
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be
such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman
inefficiency.
—Eric Ambler
%
Politics—the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
—Oscar Ameringer
%
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is
impossible for talent is genius.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
%
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are
pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because
they are themselves.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
%
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
—Joe Ancis
%
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much
better.
—Laurie Anderson
%
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
—Laurie Anderson
%
When love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone,
there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi,
Mom!
—Laurie Anderson
%
We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?
—Poul Anderson
%
Our lives improve only when we take chances—and the first and most
difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
—Walter Anderson
%
If out of all mankind one finds a single friend, he has found something
more precious than any treasure, since there is nothing in the world so
valuable that it can be compared to a real friend.
—André le chapelain
%
Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which
if persisted in, must make peace impossible.
—Sir Norman Angell
%
Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be
otherwise.
—Maya Angelou
%
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
—Maya Angelou
%
Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
—Jean Anouilh
%
Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for
discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.
—Susan B. Anthony
%
Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him.
—Minna Antrim
%
Earth—mother of the most beautiful women in the universe.
—Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?," "Star Trek"
%
There is an order of things in this universe.
—Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?," "Star Trek"
%
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language
I don't understand.
—Sir Edward Appleton
%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be
sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon
as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven
(49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in
all. The light we receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light
we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can
compute the temperature of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the
heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as
the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation,
(H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K),
gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed,
but it must be less than 444.6C, the temperature at which brimstone or
sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving...shall have their part in the lake which burneth
with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its
temperature must be at or below the boiling point, or 444.6C (Above this
point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have, then, that Heaven, at
525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
—"Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
%
A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11-inch paper cannot
be understood.
—Mark Ardis
%
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
—Aristotle
%
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
—Aristotle
%
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.
—Aristotle
%
The gods too are fond of a joke
—Aristotle
%
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness, and the power of
contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
—Aristotle
%
We make war that we may live in peace.
—Aristotle
%
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
—Aristotle
%
Wit is cultured insolence.
—Aristotle
%
I put up my thumb...and it blotted out the planet Earth.
—Neil Armstrong
%
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
—Matthew Arnold
%
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them
over the horizon.
—K. A. Arsdall
%
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a
life.
—Arthur Ashe
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one
has ever been.
—Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
—Isaac Asimov
%
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for
subtlety.
—Isaac Asimov
%
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome.
—Isaac Asimov
%
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
—Isaac Asimov
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
—Isaac Asimov
%
The three fundamental Rules of Robotics...One: a robot may not injure a
human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm...Two:..a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law...Three: a robot must
protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict
with the First and Second Laws.
—Isaac Asimov
%
While I had not had extensive experience in the field, I suspected that
sneering at magicians was not the best way to ensure a long and healthy
future.
—Skeeve (Robert Asprin, "Another Fine Myth")
%
She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
—Margot Asquith
%
What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever
mentioned it.
—Margot Asquith
%
When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty
sure he's going to have a go at it anyway.
—Clyde B. Aster
%
I married beneath me, all women do.
—Nancy Astor
%
One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I am having a
good time.
—Nancy Astor
%
The first time Adam had a chance, he laid the blame on woman.
—Nancy Astor
%
The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub
you.
—Nancy Astor
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
—W. H. Auden
%
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but
among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
—W. H. Auden
%
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are
feeling sensible.
—W. H. Auden
%
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
paper reports "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
fall over gently onto their backs."
—Audubon Society Magazine
%
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—Berthold Auerbach
%
Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Augustine
%
I know not how I came into this, shall I call it a dying life or a living
death?
—Augustine
%
Poets live in dreams and die in hunger.
—Augustine
%
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.
—Augustine
%
Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be
a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them.
—Norman Augustine
%
Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is currently
estimated.
—Norman Augustine
%
Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.
—Norman Augustine
%
If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not
selling advice.
—Norman Augustine
%
If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get
twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as
fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers
would fly off.
—Norman Augustine
%
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
—Norman Augustine
%
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.
—Norman Augustine
%
In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one
aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy
3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made
available to the Marines for the extra day.
—Norman Augustine
%
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the
output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
output.
—Norman Augustine
%
Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.
—Norman Augustine
%
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk
sow. The same is true of money.
—Norman Augustine
%
The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and
two-thirds of the problems.
—Norman Augustine
%
The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work is
based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed randomly.
—Norman Augustine
%
The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the
greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data
authenticity.
—Norman Augustine
%
There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There
are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the
two.
—Norman Augustine
%
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
—Norman Augustine
%
Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third
is covered with auditors from headquarters.
—Norman Augustine
%
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
—Marcus Aurelius
%
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them
in our turn?
—Jane Austen
%
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of
liking them.
—Jane Austen
%
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on
something witty.
—Jane Austen
%
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
—Jane Austen
%
We met Dr. Hall in such deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or
himself must be dead.
—Jane Austen
%
"What a charming amusement for young people this is,
Mr. Darcy! — There is nothing like dancing after all. — I
consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies."
"Certainly, Sir; — and it has the advantage of also being in vogue
amongst the less polished societies of the world. — Every savage can
dance."
—Jane Austen