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Main / Quotes


Never confuse motion with action.

Ben Franklin


The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.

Victor Hugo
Les Misérables, 1862


The key to this whole business is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Monte Clark


Ninety percent of the game is half mental.

Yogi Berra


Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.

Gerald Ford


It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Earl Weaver


Don’t say the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain


Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.

Irving Berlin


It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.

Tom Brokaw


Life is a joke that has only just begun.

W.S. Gilbert


There is no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

George Carlin


If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?

Linda Ellerbee


All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.

Anatole France


Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning.

George Eliot


One today is worth two tomorrows.

Ben Franklin


If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

Maya Angelou


Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.

Lawrence Bell


…there is a difference between logic and wisdom.

Molly Ivins


Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Karl Popper


For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken


An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

C. S. Lewis


Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers


If we can’t convince others that our way is best, maybe we should humbly consider the possibility that it isn’t!

Mary Ruwart
The Liberator Online 18 April 2001


Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, 1957


There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Edmund Burke


I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, just the way President Clinton did.

Timothy C. May
email signature


The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing everyone he didn’t exist.

Verbal Kint
in The Usual Suspects, 1995


Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy


Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he’ll be a mile away and barefoot.

Anonymous email signature


The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

George Bernard Shaw


Let others seek what is safe. Utter misery is safe; for the fear of any worse event is taken away.

Ovid
Epistulae ex Ponto, Bk ii, eleg 2, 1 31


A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.

Earl Wilson


People seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication.

Niklaus Wirth


If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Abraham Lincoln


A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.

William Ralph Inge


Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jefferson


If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own — that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions.

Abraham Lincoln


Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is Force, like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington


I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison
speech in the 1788 Virginia Convention


They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Ben Franklin
Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

Albert Einstein


As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert Einstein


Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Albert Einstein


If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Albert Einstein


Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Albert Einstein


God may be subtle, but He isn’t plain mean.

Albert Einstein


I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein


Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein


What a cruel reflection that a rich country cannot long be a free one.

Thomas Jefferson
Travels in France, 1787


In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.

Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782


Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, 1796


Force cannot change right.

Thomas Jefferson
to John Cartwright, 1824


How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object — the happiness of man — to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests.

Thomas Jefferson
to Ellen W. Coolidge, 1825


Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. When they do something, they can be dangerous.

Will Rogers


Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

Benjamin Constant


The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Plato


The idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.

Ayn Rand


If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

John F. Kennedy


There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.

Andrew Jackson


The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.

G. K. Chesterton


…liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power…

James Madison
The Federalist, no. 63, 1788


A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

Barry Goldwater


As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.

Christopher Dawson
The Judgement of the Nations, 1942


No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B., 1866


The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

Justice William O. Douglas
Public Utilities v. Pollak, 1952


The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.

Albert Einstein


Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln


It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire


Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

General William Westmoreland


I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson


People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

V
in V for Vendetta, 2005


Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?

Samuel Adams


The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

Will Rogers


The fact is that government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money or your life.”

Lysander Spooner


Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Calvin Coolidge


The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.

Mark Twain


A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

Thomas Paine


He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

Thomas Paine


A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Thomas Paine


Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason, Part I, 1793


Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one…

Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776


I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849


The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Henry David Thoreau
Journals
26 September 1859


A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849


There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849


…he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854


The universe is wider than our views of it.

Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854


When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776


What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Thomas Paine
The American Crisis, 1776


The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Mark Twain
Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy, 1899


Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

Mark Twain


Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

Mark Twain
Europe and Elsewhere. Corn Pone Opinions, 1925


I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad, 1869


I was gratified to be able to answer promptly and I did. I said I didn't know.

Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883


There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883


H’aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885


Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889


Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894


Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn’t.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


It is easier to stay out than to get out.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897


Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Mark Twain
The Mysterious Stranger, 1916


We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Winston Churchill
1903


There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.

Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate


Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

Ayn Rand


The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

Ayn Rand


The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Ayn Rand


The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Ayn Rand


We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Ayn Rand


A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

Ayn Rand


I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalization, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.

Margaret Thatcher
5 February 1976


Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.

Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776


Just think how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are even stupider!

George Carlin


The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.

George Carlin


Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?

George Carlin


The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

George Carlin


I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

George Carlin


On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Will Rogers


Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

Will Rogers


We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Will Rogers


It's hard to see how you can pay off a multi-trillion dollar debt even if you mug the rich. It's not even clear how we could stop the debt from increasing every year until cannibalism breaks out.

Scott Adams
28 Aug 2009 blog


There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert A Heinlein


If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.

Thomas Sowell
1992


Ships are safe in harbors, but that's not what ships are for…

Unknown


Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson


Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Thomas Jefferson


I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Thomas Jefferson


I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Thomas Jefferson


In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson


Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Thomas Jefferson


Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Thomas Jefferson (attr)


When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

P. J. O'Rourke


Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

G. K. Chesterton


The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

G. K. Chesterton


Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990


A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990


The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.

Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990


The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get rich quick theory of life.

Theodore Roosevelt


The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.

Theodore Roosevelt
11 November 1902


Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

Theodore Roosevelt
August 1912


There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

Theodore Roosevelt
12 October 1915


To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Theodore Roosevelt
7 May 1918


If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

Theodore Roosevelt
10 April 1899, The Strenuous Life


The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Lord Acton
letter to Mary Gladstone, 24 April 1881


Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

Michael Crichton


In history, some of the worst disasters have been caused by idealists trying to force people into “doing what is good for them.” Such idealism not only leads to suffering among its innocent victims, but also to delusion and corruption of the idealists applying the force. I also find idealists prone to ignore experience and experiment that inconveniently clashes with dogma or theory.

Bjarne Stroustrup
The Design and Evolution of C++, 1994


Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

George Washington
Farewell Address (¶27), September 17, 1796


If, in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.—But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

George Washington
Farewell Address (¶26), September 17, 1796


Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Ronald Reagan


We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

Ronald Reagan
July 31, 1968


Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience. … without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Ronald Reagan
August 23, 1984


If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

Daniel Webster


Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

Daniel Webster


If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

Daniel Webster


A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Daniel Webster


There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.

I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.

Daniel Webster


No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm … that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.

Alexander Hamilton


Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state.

Heinrich Himmler


If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.

Honorable J. A. Williams, Circuit Judge
Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, 34 Am. Rep. 52 (1878)


The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts; not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln
Speech in Cincinnati OH, September 17, 1859


The only way to get from here to there is to go someplace else first.


Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of.

Allen’s Law


After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.

Farndick’s Corollary


Nobody notices the big errors.

Mayne’s Law


If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that shows you tried.


The most interesting results happen only once.

Tenenbaum’s Law of Replicability


For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Harrison’s Postulate


You cannot push a noodle anywhere.


If you call a tail a leg, how may legs does a dog have? Four, just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it one!

Abraham Lincoln


Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Mark Twain


In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.

Imbesi’s Law of the Conservation of Filth

But you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.

Freeman’s Extension


The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress.

Sweeney’s Law


There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong.

Perrussel’s Law


It requires less energy to take an object out of its proper place than to put it back.

MacPherson’s Theory of Entropy


Fish and a candidate’s promise are worthless after three days.

Fein’s Law of Political Campaigns


Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average drivers.

Grelb’s Reminder


Four-wheel-drive just means getting stuck in more inaccessible places.

Phillip’s Law


Using state-of-the-art software design and development tools just means creating bugs that are more difficult to track down and fix.

Colley’s Corollary to Phillip’s Law


Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

Law of Probable Dispersal


A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

Gourd’s Axiom


The less work an organization produces, the more frequently it reorganizes.

Jacobson’s Law


Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what’s for lunch.

Orson Welles


It ain’t the things you don’t know what gets you into trouble; it’s the things you know for sure what ain’t so.

Josh Billings


The early worm gets eaten first.


Quick fixes take longer.


Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Winston Churchill


We have plenty of athletes with the desire to win. We need more athletes with the desire to prepare to win.

A famous football coach


As I get older, I find that my fantasies focus less on improbable situations with Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and more on scenes where I am slamming a software developer’s head against a wall while screaming “IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO!?!”

Jesse Berst, Windows Watcher


There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883

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