Quotes

From Ben's Writing

Contents 1 Anonymous 2 Douglas Adams 3 Freda Adler 4 Aesop 5 Joan of Arc 6 Randall Amster 7 Isaac Asimov 8 Napoleon Beazley 9 David Benioff 10 George Boole 11 Stewart Brand 12 Abigail Van Buren 13 Orson Scott Card 14 Winston Churchill 15 Guy Consolmagno 16 Douglas Coupland 17 Seymour Cray 18 Phillip K. Dick 19 Will Durant 20 Bob Dylan 21 Umberto Eco 22 Dave Eggers 23 Albert Einstein 24 T. S. Eliot 25 Benjamin Franklin 26 Martin Fischer 27 Madeleine L'Engle 28 Epicurus 29 Leslie Feist 30 Richard Feynman 31 Henry Ford 32 Dan Fouts 33 David Gerrold 34 Jean Giraudoux 35 Paul Graham 36 Cathy Griffin 37 David Gray 38 Donna Haraway 39 Christopher Hitchens 40 Ernest Hemingway 41 Thomas Jefferson 42 Dr. Samuel Johnson 43 Martin Luther King, Jr. 44 Mark Kingwell 45 Rich Kulawiec 46 Abraham Lincoln 47 Bill Maher 48 Chris McKinstry 49 Method Man 50 George Jean Nathan 51 Friedrich Nietzsche 52 Grahm Norton 53 Alexander Pope 54 Jeff Raskin 55 Jef I. Richards 56 Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) 57 Bertrand Russell 58 Santa Claus 59 Carl Sagan 60 Jean-Paul Sartre 61 Seneca 62 George Bernard Shaw 63 Olin Shivers 64 Robert Louis Stevenson 65 Tacitus 66 Mother Teresa 67 Mark Twain 68 Paul Valery 69 Voltaire 70 Kurt Vonnegut 71 WILPF 72 Kanye West 73 Oscar Wilde

Anonymous

• "He who is most creative conceals his sources the best."
• "Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever."
• "At any one time, somewhere in the world, there is a cat thinking about how much it despises you."
• "Dinner—  think of it as lunch, in another time-zone."
• "When I was a little kid, I prayed for a bicycle. When I got older, I understood that God worked in a different way. So I stole a bicycle and prayed He would forgive me."
• "I like living in a country that doesn't declare war on abstract nouns (eg "terror")."
• "The difference between theory and practice, is that practice is smaller in theory than in practice."
• "Ignorance isn't stupidity, but choosing to remain ignorant is."
• "Today is the tomorrow that you were so worried about yesterday."
• "... can be used for wholesale translations (e.g., from English to American) very fast." [Talking about a Multi-Pattern Search Algorithm]
• "This email has been spell checked by Outlook, unintended words can be generated because of this."
• "The magnitude of this hack compares favorably with that of the national debt."
• "Cadbury Mini Eggs are like Platonic (perfect, ideal) M&Ms. (Therefore, God exists.)"
• "The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity."
• "A program is a sequence of processing errors."
• "Saying I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart, is more like saying: I'm not real smart, I'm just imaginary smart."
• "Health is a crown worn by the well and only seen by the unwell."

Douglas Adams

Full name: Douglas Noël Adams

• "The book is a work of fiction. It's a sequence of words arranged to unfold a story in a reader's mind. There is no such actual, real person as Arthur Dent. He has no existence outside the sequence of words designed to create an idea of this imaginary person in people's minds. There is no objective real world I am describing, or which I can enter, and pick up his computer, look at it and tell you what model it is, or turn it over and read off its serial number for you. It doesn't exist." [Spoken in response to a fan's question regarding what kind of computer one of the characters used in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]
• "The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened ... it’s just wonderful. And ... the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned."
• "To summarize the summery of the summery, people are a problem."

Freda Adler

• "Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit."

Aesop

• "The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scale."

Joan of Arc

In French: Jeanne d'Arc

• "I am not afraid... I was born to do this."

Randall Amster

• "Mandating that everyone pay private insurers for healthcare, without a public option, is possibly the most asinine way to go about it. Funny how people can get all up in arms about a potential 'government takeover' of healthcare, yet seem to care less about an impending corporate takeover."

Isaac Asimov

• "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

Napoleon Beazley

"The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. But the person that committed that act is no longer here - I am.

I'm not going to struggle physically against any restraints. I'm not going to shout, use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I'm not only upset, but I'm saddened by what is happening here tonight. I'm not only saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same shameful mistake.

If someone tried to dispose of everyone here for participating in this killing, I'd scream a resounding, "No." I'd tell them to give them all the gift that they would not give me...and that's to give them all a second chance.

I'm sorry that I am here. I'm sorry that you're all here. I'm sorry that John Luttig died. And I'm sorry that it was something in me that caused all of this to happen to begin with.

Tonight we tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of justice...Tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some cases, killing is right.

This conflict hurts us all, there are no SIDES. The people who support this proceeding think this is justice. The people that think that I should live think that is justice. As difficult as it may seem, this is a clash of ideals, with both parties committed to what they feel is right. But who's wrong if in the end we're all victims?

In my heart, I have to believe that there is a peaceful compromise to our ideals. I don't mind if there are none for me, as long as there are for those who are yet to come. There are a lot of men like me on death row - good men - who fell to the same misguided emotions, but may not have recovered as I have.

Give those men a chance to do what's right. Give them a chance to undo their wrongs. A lot of them want to fix the mess they started, but don't know how. The problem is not in that people aren't willing to help them find out, but in the system telling them it won't matter anyway. No one wins tonight. No one gets closure. No one walks away victorious." [Executed in Texas on May 28, 2002]

David Benioff

• "At night the wind blew so loud and long it startled you when it stopped." [City of Thieves]

George Boole

• "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." [Quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture]

Stewart Brand

• "Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he- said- she- said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly."

Abigail Van Buren

Note that this is pseudonym used by the writers of the Dear Abby column: Pauline Phillips and now Jeanne Phillips

• "If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires."
• "True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance." [Presumably a reference to Alexander Pope]

Orson Scott Card

• "Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon." [Children of the Mind]

Winston Churchill

Full name and title: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

• "I never worry about action, but only inaction."
• "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

Guy Consolmagno

Info: Vatican astronomer

• "Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

Douglas Coupland

• "TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public."

Seymour Cray

• "Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it."

Phillip K. Dick

Full name: Philip Kindred Dick.

• "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]

Will Durant

• "[P]hilosopher means not a 'possessor' but a 'lover' of wisdom"

Bob Dylan

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman.

• "[T]he things you had the hardest time parting with, are the things you need the least." [Lonesome Day Blues, Love and Theft]

Umberto Eco

• "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."

Dave Eggers

Full Name: David K. Eggers

• "I have been humbled so many times since arriving that I am beginning to think someone is trying desperately to send me a message, and that message is 'Leave this place.'" [Speaking for Valentino Achak Deng, in What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, 2006]
• "[Lives] are very difficult to make interesting, even when they seem interesting to those living them at the time."
• "If you've got the ugliest house on the street, you never have to look at it." [Speaking for "Eric", his friend, in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggerting Genius, 2000. The quote is from the 2001 re-print on page 357]

Albert Einstein

• "Any intelligent fool can make things better, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

T. S. Eliot

Full name: Thomas Stearns Eliot

• "[I] ... [h]ave known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." [The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock]

Benjamin Franklin

• "As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."

Martin Fischer

• "Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification."

Madeleine L'Engle

• "[T]here is little character in the face of someone who has avoided suffering, shunned risk and rejected life."

Epicurus

• "If God is willing but unable to prevent evil, he is not omnipotent; if God is able but not willing to prevent evil, he is not good; if God is willing and able to prevent evil, then why is there evil?"

Leslie Feist

Solo artist under the name Feist.

• "It may be years until the day; My dreams will match up with my pay." [Mushaboom, Let it Die, 2004]

Richard Feynman

• "I think Nature's imagination is so much greater than man's that she's never going to let us relax."

Henry Ford

• "If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows it can't be done."

Dan Fouts

Full name: Daniel Francis Fouts

• "I'm a polyatheist - there are many gods I don't believe in"

David Gerrold

• "[F]reedom isn't a licence, it's responsibility." [Author's Note in The Man Who Folded Himself, 2003, p. 119]

Jean Giraudoux

• "Only the mediocre are always at their best."

Paul Graham

Personal site: www.paulgraham.com

• "[W]hen someone is being an asshole it's usually uncertain even in their own mind how much is deliberate. In fact that is arguably one of the defining qualities of an asshole." [On the topic of Trolls]

Cathy Griffin

• "I want to be the read-headed Ophra!"

David Gray

• "[I]f we are searching for peace, how come we still believe in hatred as the catalyst?"

Donna Haraway

• "[T]eaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse."

Christopher Hitchens

• "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Ernest Hemingway

• "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

Thomas Jefferson

• "Experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” [1779]

Dr. Samuel Johnson

• "We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us."
• "The measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• "The most segregated hour in America is eleven o'clock Sunday morning."

Mark Kingwell

• "[Canadians] regard Toronto as a place just as arrogant as New York, without the excuse of good shopping or theatre."

Rich Kulawiec

• "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature."

Abraham Lincoln

• "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other."

Bill Maher

• "Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me – I quit.'"

Chris McKinstry

• "I'll soon be a footnote on a long forgotten page which even Google never bothers to visit." (I am possibly falsely attributing it to him.)

Method Man

Born Clifford Smith.

• "If ya can't get yourself a ten — The least you can do is spark five twos." [I Get My Thang In Action, Tical, 1994]

George Jean Nathan

• "I only drink to make other people seem interesting"

Friedrich Nietzsche

Full name: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For authoritative information on him and his ideas, visit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy.

• "After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands"
• "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."

Grahm Norton

• "Gay coffee— it just goes down smother." [Said to Cathy Griffin on her show Cathy Griffin: My life on the D-List, Season 3, Episode 6]

Alexander Pope

• "A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." (my emphasis) [An Essay on Criticism, 1709]

Jeff Raskin

• "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." [From and interview in Doctor Dobb's Journal]

Jef I. Richards

• "Commercial speech is like obscenity... we can't seem to define it, but we know it when we see it." (my emphasis) [A line so infamously associated with pornography]
• "I wish all consumers were as gullible as advertising's biggest critics. Anyone who believes advertising is that powerful will believe almost anything."
• "If its not done ethically, advertising won't be trusted. If consumers don't trust it, advertising is pointless." (my emphasis)
• "There is a huge difference between journalism and advertising. Journalism aspires to truth. Advertising is regulated for truth. I'll put the accuracy of the average ad in this country up against the average news story any time." (my emphasis)

Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71)

• "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Bertrand Russell

• "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture." (my emphasis)
• "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
• "Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know."
• "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
• "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

Santa Claus

• "I'm trying to get this obesity shit together because you know what doesn't squeeze down a chimney well? Type 2 diabetes."

Carl Sagan

• "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. "

Jean-Paul Sartre

Full name: Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre

• "Hell is other people."

Seneca

• "Religion is considered by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."

George Bernard Shaw

• "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
• "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

Olin Shivers

• "I object to doing things that computers can do."
• "I tend to look for weak, uncertain students and feed off of their insecurities; by preying on their poor self-images, I manage to temporarily assuage my own feelings of inadequacy and failure. I've also found undergraduate advising to be a terrific vehicle for venting a lot of my own pent-up rage and frustration." [From a uncensored version of his bio published by MIT's undergraduate office]

Robert Louis Stevenson

Born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson

• "Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity."

Tacitus

Full name: Publius Cornelius Tacitus.

• "They made a wasteland and called it peace."

Mother Teresa

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

• "The silence and the emptiness is so great—  that I look and do not see—  I listen and I do not hear." [Taken from private letters to friends, superiors and confessors; Gathered by Rev. Kolodiejchuk]

Mark Twain

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens; Mark Twain was his pen name.

• "It's not what we don't know that hurts us; It's that we know so much that ain't true."

Paul Valery

• "A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas."

Voltaire

Born François-Marie Arouet

• "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
• "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
• "All men [sic] are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God."
• "Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."
• "Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause."
• "Everything's fine today, that is our illusion."
• "He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise."

Kurt Vonnegut

• "New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."
• "When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life. Old age is more like a semicolon."

WILPF

Expanded: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

• "Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate Personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person." [Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan]

Kanye West

Full name: Kanye Omari West

• "If you admire somebody, you should go ahead [and] tell [them]; People never get the flowers while they can still smell them." (my emphasis) [Graduation, 2007]
• "Some people graduate, but we're still stupid; They tell you read this, eat this, don't look around." [Graduation, 2007]
• "George [W.] Bush doesn't care about black people." [Spoken while deviating from the prepared script during A Concert for Hurricane Relief, NBC, September 2, 2005]

Oscar Wilde

• "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passion a quotation." [Ironically—intentional or not—Wilde has created a bit of a paradox all here: we are all inextricably stuck as living mimicry and our passions are all embodied in a wide variety of quotations. If you are lucky enough, in his eyes, to live without mimicry or working passionately towards a quoted ideal, then you are part of the other group of people—the remaining part of the "Most" Wilde indirectly refers to in his quotation. But then you must, by definition, fall into the category of people he mocks: those who live their lives according to some quotation. These people, however, may do it even while unaware of it. What's interesting here, is that simple change—would eliminate the paradox—yet his choice leads us to a set of people, so to speak, who are not represented explicitly in this quotation, but rather are included implicitly and ever so subtly.]