Here are some quotes that I have come across in my readings. They are in no specific order, other than the five classes listed below. If you like them pass them on.
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``Le hasard ne favorise que les esprits
prepares.''
(Chance favors only the prepared mind.)
-- Louis Pasteur
Chance favors the trained mind.
Quoted in The Sciences, August 1981.
--Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French chemist, bacteriologist - The
Great Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
``A good question is never answered. It is
not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to
bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of
idea.''
-- John Ciardi.
``Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.''
``I'm not going to learn any stats; I'm
going to be a naturalist.''
-- Dan Gluesenkamp, March 1, 1994.
``Statistics are like condoms: Nobody likes
to use them, but no one will do science with you if you don't.''
-- Jeff Cynx, via Lucy Jacobs
``...[I]t's important to realize
that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal
intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between
them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.''
-- Richard Dawkins, The New Yorker, September 9, 1996, pg.
45.
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
"The researcher must have a robust faith,
and yet not believe."
--Claude Bernard
``For every complex problem there exists an answer that is simple, concise and totally wrong.''
Everything has been thought of before, but
the problem is to think of it again.
--Johann W. von Goethe - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
The hen is an egg's way of producing another
egg.
--Samuel Butler - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
False views, if supported by some evidence,
do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving
their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is
closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
--Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Heredity is what a man believes in until his
son begins to behave like a delinquent.
--Presbyterian Life - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Research is to see what everybody else has
seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
--Albert Szent-Gyorgyi - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
The environmentalists seem to believe that
if cats gave birth to kittens in a stove, the offspring would be
biscuits.
--Abraham Myerson - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
True genius resides in the capacity for
evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
--Winston Churchill - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
No one has ever had an idea in a dress
suit.
--Sir Fredrick G. Banting - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
We never stop investigating. We are never
satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer
leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival
trick of our species.
--Desmond Morris - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
On second thought, the history of science is
the only history which displays cumulative progress of knowledge,
hence the progress of science is the only yardstick by which we can
measure the progress of mankind.
--L.J.P. - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
In science the credit goes to the man who
convinces the world, not to the man whom the idea first occurs.
--Sir William Osler - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Science is facts. Just as houses are made of
stones, so is science made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a
house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. Value of
Science, 1904
--Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French scientist - The Great
Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
or
--J. Robert Oppenheimer - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Every great scientific truth goes through
three states: First, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next
they say it has been discovered before; lastly they say they aways
believed it.
--Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) - The Great Thoughts Compiled by George
Seldes
What science and the quest for knowledge are
after is irrefutable truth: that is, propositions that human beings
are not free to reject - that are compelling. They are of two kinds,
as we have known since Leibnitz: truths of reasioning and truths of
fact.
--Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-born American political
philosopher - Contributions to The New Yorker November 21, 1977 - The
Great Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
....we do not know a truth without knowing
its cause.
--Aristotle (384-322) Nicomaachean Ethics - The Great Thoughts
Compiled by George Seldes
If I have been able to see further than
others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
--Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence
J. Peter
Great men have been compared to giants upon
whose shoulders pygmies have climbed, who nevertheless see further
than they.
-- Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French Scientist, Introduction à
l'etude de la medicine expérimentale (1865) - The Great
Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
I say with Diacus Stella, a dwarf standing
on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.
-- Robert Burton (1577-1640) English Clergyman, The anatomy of
Melancholy (1621) - The Great Thoughts Compiled by George
Seldes
Without speculation there is no good and
original observation.
Letter to Alfred Russell Wallace (1857)
--Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English Biologist - The Great Thoughts
Compiled by George Seldes
The scientific attitude implies...the
postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate
that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the
universe.
Le hasard et la nécessité (1971)
--Jaques Monod (1910-1976) - The Great Thoughts Compiled by George
Seldes
It is the weight not the number of
experiments that is to regarded.
The correspondence of Isaac Newton.
--Isaac Newton (1642-1727) - The Great Thoughts Compiled by George
Seldes
Do not become archivists of facts. Try to
penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for
the laws which govern them.
"To the Academic Youth of Russia" February 27, 1936
--Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian physiologist, Nobel prize 1904 -
The Great Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it
would not be called research, would it?"
-- Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always found violent
opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a
man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but
honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
--- Einstein, Albert
"The whole of science is nothing more than a
refinement of everyday thinking."
--- Einstein, Albert
"Few are those who see with their own eyes
and feel with their own hearts."
--- Einstein, Albert
"Not everything that counts can be counted,
and not everything that can be counted counts."
---Albert Einstein
The mere formulation of a problem is far
more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of
mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new
possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires
creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
-- Albert Einstein
"Facts do not cease to exist because they
are ignored."
-- Aldous Huxley
Discovery is seeing what everybody else has
seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
"Research is to see what everybody else has
seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."
-- Albert Szent-Gyoergi
Truth in science can be defined as the
working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better
one.
--- Konrad Lorenz
This example illustrates the differences in
the effects which may be produced by research in pure or applied
science. A research on the lines of applied science would doubtless
have led to improvement and development of the older methods -- the
research in pure science has given us an entirely new and much more
powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads to
reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and
revolutions, whether political or industrial, are exceedingly
profitable things if you are on the winning side.
--- J. J. Thomson
Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks
after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he
will seek in vain.
---H.L.F. von Helmholtz
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
A good question is never answered. It is not
a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to
bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
--- John Ciardi.
A drug can be defined as a chemical that,
when injected into an animal, produces a scientific paper.
--- Tony Underwood, ``Experiments in Ecology'', 1997, pg.
106
I am sitting in the smallest room in the
house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind
me.
--Max Reger (1873-1916) - From "The third and possibly the best 637
best things anybody ever said. - Chosen and arranged by Robert Byrne
(1986)"
Genetics is the field of investigation that
seeks to understand this phenomenon of replication and hence must be
considered basic to all biology.
…… Genetics first and foremost, including its long-term
manifestation &endash; evolutionary biology &endash; is the
integrator of all biological concepts and data. Genetics, now the
most rigorous and conceptually complete field of biology, has reached
this stage only in our lifetime. For millennia human beings had no
useful answers about inheritance because they were unable to
formulate useful questions. In science, useful questions are those
that are amenable to observation and experimentation and, hence,
susceptible to being answered.
--John A. Moore, Science as a way of Knowing (The foundations of
modern biology), Harvard University Press, 1993
Joke:
A doctoral student, a post-doc, and a professor are walking through a
city park and they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie
comes out in a puff of smoke. The Genie says, "I usually only grant
three wishes, so I'll give each of you just one."
"Me first! Me first!" says the doctoral student. "I want to be in the
Bahamas, driving a speedboat with a gorgeous woman."
Poof! He's gone.
"Me next! Me next!" says the post-doc. "I want to be in Hawaii,
relaxing on the beach with a professional volleyball player on one
side and a Mai Tai on the other."
Poof! She's gone.
"You're next," the Genie says to the professor.
The professor says, "I want those two back in the lab after
lunch."
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real
marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be
anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.
--- Lewis Thomas, "The Wonderful Mistake" in The Medusa and the
Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher
"If you ask a statistician many questions, expect smaller answers."
"Many people use statistics as a dog uses a lamp post; beware of p-values."
Stephen Senn, Department of Statistical Science, University College London:
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
Aaron Levenstein, as quoted in Nature Genetics: 24:, January 2000.
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if one went to Harvard).
- Edgar R. Fiedler
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
For a great university one must provide football for the alumni, sex for the undergraduates and parking for the faculty.
-Kerr's Rules for a Successful College
If anything has the word 'science' in its name, it's not science. Political Science, Social Science, Computer Science, ...
-George Cebulka
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
-Galileo Galilei
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
-Paul Dirac
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-Stephen Jay Gould
It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
-Sir Frederick G. Banting
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-Mike Adams
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-Wernher von Braun
Science cannot stop while ethics catches up -- and nobody should expect scientists to do all the thinking for the country.
-Elvin Stackman
Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.
-Aubrey Eben
The important thing is never to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds it's spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure.
-Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
There was a sociologist who had written a paper for all of us to read... I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out: I couldn't make head nor tail of it... Finally, I said to myself, 'I'm gonna stop and read one sentence slowly'... So I stopped -- at random -- and read the next sentence very carefully... 'The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.' I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? 'People read.'
-Richard P. Feynman
When someone demands blind obedience, you'd be a fool not to peek.
-Jim Fiebig
``The difference between ignorant and
educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has
nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The
difference between stupid and intelligent people -- and this is true
whether or not they are well-educated -- is that intelligent people
can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambigious or even
contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to
become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.''
-- Constable (a.k.a. Brigadier General Arthur Hornsby) Moore, "The
Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer", by Neal
Stephenson, pg. 283.
"Natural abilities are like natural plants,
that need pruning by study."
--Francis Bacon
"The things taught in schools and colleges
are not an education, but the means of education."
--R.W.Emerson c. 1831
"Wise are those who learn that the bottom
line doesn't have to be their top priority."
--William Arthur Ward
``It's not possible to do anything less than
your best if you want to have an academic career. You do a lot that's
unrecognized and uncompensated, but that's what's required.''
-- Anne MacLachlan, October 16, 1996
"A university studies politics, but it will
not advocate fascism or communism. A university studies military
tactics but it will not promote war. A university studies peace but
it will not organize crusades of pacifism. It will study every
question that affects human welfare, but it will not carry a banner
in a crusade for anything except freedom of learning."
--L.D.Hoffman, president of the U of Minnesota c. 1936
"...briefly, a conference is what you hold when you want to give a particular group prestige; a congress is what you have if you wish to make the prestige international; a convention is what you have if you want to have a good time as well; a course is what you have if you want the good time to go on for several weeks; and a colloquium is if you want to have a good time for several weeks with a very small and select number of people.
"...At conferences the participants confer; at a congress they dissent; at a convention they listen; on a course they fall asleep; at a colloquium they do the same but often in the same bed.
"To put it another way: a conference is an
elite meeting on equal terms; a congress is a group of elites meeting
on opposite terms; a convention is a mob meeting on equal terms; a
course is an elite instructing a mob; and a colloquium is a group
capable of considering all these phenomena."
-- Malcolm Bradbury in "Unsent Letters":
The difference between ignorant and educated
people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do
with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between
stupid and intelligent people -- and this is true whether or not they
are well-educated -- is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.
They are not baffled by ambigious or even contradictory situations --
in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when
things seem overly straightforward.
--- Constable ( Brigadier General Arthur Hornsby) Moore, "The Diamond
Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer", by Neal Stephenson, pg.
283.
``Education's purpose is to replace an empty
mind with an open one.''
-- Malcolm S. Forbes.
The man who does not read good books has no
advantage over the man who can't read them.
--Mark Twain - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
The university is the only institution in
Western society whose business it is to search for and transmit truth
regardless of all competing or conflicting pressures and demands;
pressures for immediate usefulness, for social approval, pressures to
serve the special interest of government, a class, a professional
group, a race, a faith, even a nation.
--Henry Steele Commanger - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
It is evident that in democratic communities
the interest of individuals, as well as the security of the
commonwealth, demands that the education of the greater number should
be scientific, commertial, and industrial, rather than literary.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) - Peter's Quotations By Dr.
Laurence J. Peter
A liberal education....frees a man from the
prison-house of his class, race, time, background, family and even
his nation.
--James Bryant Conant - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
A lecture is an occasion when you numb one
end to benefit the other.
--John Gould - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
Creative minds always have been known to
survive any kind of bad training.
--Anna Freud - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
You can get much further with a kind word
and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
--Al Capone (Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter)
Or: You can teach better with a lecture and an exam than with a
lecture alone ......(J. L.)
The important thing is to not stop
questioning.
--Albert Einstein - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
I respect faith but doubt is what gets you
an education.
--Wilson Mizner - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
The object of education is to prepare the
young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
--Robert Maynard Hutchins - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Education is what survives when what has
been learnt has been forgotten.
--Erich Fromm - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
The business of education is not to make the
young perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose
their minds as may best make them capable of any, when they shall
apply themseves to it.
--John Locke (1632-1704) - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
There are many truths of which the full
meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it
home.
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence
J. Peter
Personally I'm always ready to learn,
although I do not always like being taught.
--Winston Churchill - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Treat people as if they were what they ought
to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
--Johann W. on Goethe (1749-1832) - Peter's Quotations By Dr.
Laurence J. Peter
Judge a man by his questions rather than his
answers.
--Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) - Peter's
Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
We cannot learn without pain.
--Aristotle (384-322) Nicomaachean Ethics - The Great Thoughts
Compiled by George Seldes
To sow schools is to reap men.
Quotation on placards.
--Fidel Castro (1926- ) The Great Thoughts Compiled by George
Seldes
The tax which will be paid for the purpose
of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be
paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we
leave the people to ignorance.
Letter to George Wythe 1786
--Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd U.S. President - The Great
Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
Human history becomes more and more a race
between education and catastrophe.
The Outline of History (1920)
--H.G. Wells (1866-1946) British novelist, historian - The Great
Thoughts Compiled by George Seldes
"Never regard study as a duty, but as the
enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of
beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to
the profit of the community to which your later work belongs."
--- Einstein, Albert
"Teaching should be such that what is
offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."
--- Einstein, Albert
It's okay for students to ask dumb
questions; they're easier to handle than dumb mistakes.
-- Anonymous
Teach your students to use what talents they
have; the woods would be silent if no bird sang except those that
sing best.
-- Anonymous
Education makes a people easy to lead, but
difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
-- Lord Brougham
From a commencement address:
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been
forgotten.
--- B. F. Skinner
[Three classes]:
Those who see.
Those who see when they are shown.
Those who do not see.
---Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
--William Arthur Ward
Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its
purity from stagnation ... even so does inaction sap the vigors of
the mind.
---Leonardo da Vinci
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a
fire to be kindled.
---Plutarch
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
-Charles Darwin (1871)
"It's seldom possible to predict innovation, it's frequently possible to predict improvement."
-Brian Clark
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-John Ciardi
Don't find yourself believing that the only colors are the ones in the box.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
- H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History" (190)\
I am not sure what this is, but an 'F' would only dignify it.
-unknown English Professor
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-unknown Ohio University English Professor
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
I never learned anything from anybody who agreed with me.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
-Confucius
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
-Alan Perlis
It's no use going to school if the library is not your final destination.
-Ray Bradbury (found at http://www.faisal.com/quotes/)
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
-Bertrand Russell
Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.
- T. Dobzhansky
Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.
-Chinese proverb
That's just some bullshit that they insist that I teach.
-anonymous CMU professor
The mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work unless it's open.
-Frank Zappa or Taffee Marchant
The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious.
-Noam Chomsky
The true ratio of the numbers can only be ascertained by an average deducted from the sum of as many single values as possible; the greater the number, the more are merely chance effects eliminated.
- G. Mendel
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-Bertrand Russell
This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest .... It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.
When speaking in public, try to be like a woman's skirt: long enough to be respectable, but short enough to be interesting.
Yes, the lectures are optional. Graduation is also optional.
-Brian Quinn
``Virtual memory is for weenies.''
-- Seymour Cray, builder of the fastest computers in the world for
over 30 years
"First we thought the PC was a calculator.
Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII -- and
we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we
thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized
it's a brochure."
-- Douglas Adams
Computers are useless. They can only give
you answers.
--Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - From "The other 637 best things anybody
ever said. - - Chosen and arranged by Robert Byrne (1984)"
During my eighty-seven years I have
witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none
of them has done away the need for character in the individual and
the ability to think.
--Bernard M. Baruch - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
"Buying an Apple just doesn't make all that much sense when the whole rest of the world is using PC/Windows-based systems." Yeah, and being American doesn't make much sense when there are over a billion Chinese.
-Sam Kass
Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
-Jeff Pesis
I was watching CNN during the riots of Los Angeles a couple of years ago and they were showing video footage of a mob looting a radio shack. Running out of the radio shack was hi-fis, video cameras and everything they could pick up. But the radio shack was right next to a Macintosh dealership which had powerbooks in the window. And it was untouched. So here these incredible valuable portable very, very powerful computers was sitting untouched behind an unbroken shop-window while the poor people steal Sony Walkmans. I felt that was so sad, and so indicative of our real problem.
-William Gibson
In a world without fences, who needs Gates?
-unknown
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive attempt to keep up with Apple.
-Byte, 12/94
It's 106 ms to Chicago, we've got a full disk of GIFs, half a meg of hypertext, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Click it.
-Christopher Davis
More than anything else, [Windows] XP reminds one of a tourist trap. You arrive in a foreign city, and a handsome stranger walks up to you and says he will show you around the city. He offers to take you to the very best shops and restaurants. But you soon realize that he is taking you only to places that are owned by his relatives or by someone who gives him a kickback.
-Tom Regan
Now that departments have a choice between Unix and Windows there's a lot of interest in Macs.
-Dair Grant
The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
-Larry Anderson
The future is going to be Unix flavoured anyway. It may hurt US American pride, but in the not so distant future neither the US nor Europe will matter. We will become totally irrelevant ourselves. China and India will determine what goes and what doesn't. Their economies of scale with simply wipe out anything that's not going in their markets.
As far as the Chinese government is concerned, Windoze is not going to be part of China's future and India is also more and more leaning towards Linux. The writing is on the wall.
Anything not based on Unix is guaranteed to become irrelevant over the next 10-15 years. This means OSX will be part of the global IT ecosystem of tomorrow, Windoze will not. It is as simple as that.
Why do you think Microsoft is desperately trying to get into game boxes, media appliances and mobile phones? They already know that their existing PC centric business is going to be busted by the Chinese and they know that there is nothing they can do about it. The only way for them to stay in business is to get out of PCs and into other areas.
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=4322
Posted by Guest Poster #26 on 02/01/05 10:36 AM
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
-Steve Jobs
While today's digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina's real time performance goes unchallenged. Actually to simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times each second.
-John K. Stevens, "Reverse Engineering the Brain", Byte
"We do not have the power to change the winds, but we can turn the sails."
A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.
-Arthur Golden
A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind...
A ship in a harbor is safe, but that's not what ships were made for.
A team of champions will never beat a champion team.
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.
-J.R.R. Tolkein
Far better it is to dare mighty things, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those who neither enjoy much or suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt
He who doesn't risk never gets to drink champagne.
-Russian Proverb
I do not intend to tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death.
-Seen on a T-shirt
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot...and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's precisely why I succeed.
-Michael Jordan
If there is no wind, row.
-Japanese proverb
If you don't take a chance you don't have a chance.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
-Bruce Lee
Never let the least you can do be the best that you do.
-Rick Shonk
One great cause of failure is lack of concentration.
-Bruce Lee
Practice doesn't make perfect, nor is it supposed to. Practice is about increasing your repertoire of ways to recover from your mistakes
-Joann C. Gutin, Discover
The Door to Success is labelled "PUSH"
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually fear that you will make one.
-Elbert Hubbard
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.
Those who fear the thorns will never pick the roses...
Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that held it's ground.
We cannot control the winds, but we can always adjust our sails.
We must choose between what's right and what's easy
-J.K. Rowling
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
-Vince Lombardi
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors."
---African proverb
We trained hard.....but every time we were beginning to form up
into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life
that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing... and a
wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing inefficiency and demoralization.
--Petronius (d. A.D. 66) - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning
to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later
in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a
wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
--- Gaius Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC
"A person gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the
puddles in the road."
--Alexander Smith
An expression that a wise man once told me:
"Pioneers take the arrows, settlers
take the land
... I have the arrow scars
to prove it.
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this
but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be
called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
--Albert Einstein 1954
``If things seem under control, you're just not going fast
enough.''
-- Mario Andretti
``I didn't bite and claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.''
``He asked me if I knew what time it was. I said, `Yes, but not
right now.' ''
-- Steven Wright
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring
themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce
children but that children produce adults.
--Peter De Vries - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J. Peter
We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the
events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best
informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.
--Will and Ariel Durant - Peter's Quotations By Dr. Laurence J.
Peter
Too many people are ready to carry the stool when the piano needs
to be moved.
-- Anonymous
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
-- Anonymous
Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
-- Anonymous
Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly
and for the same reason.
-- Anonymous
A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours
wasted.
-- Anonymous
'How do you know so much about everything?' was asked of a very
wise and intelligent man;
and the answer was 'By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions
as to anything of which I was ignorant.'
-- John Abbott (1821-1893) - Canadian prime minister
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the
evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
--- Thomas Brackett Reed
There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened,
it won't last.
---Jules Renard
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and
only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let
other people spend it for you.
---Carl Sandburg
My uncle ordered popovers from the restaurant's bill of fare.
And, when they were served, he regarded them with a penetrating
stare.
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom as he sat there on that
chair:
"To eat these things," said my uncle, "You must exercise great
care.
You may swallow down what's solid, BUT...you must spit out the
air!"
And as you partake of the world's bill of fare, that's darned good
advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air. And be careful what you
swallow.
--Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
"Who's the more foolish...the fool or the fool who follows
him?
-- Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi, Star Wars
Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to
depend greatly on our own point of view.
--Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi, Return of the Jedi
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
Renee Decartes walked into a bar and the bartender asked, "Would
you like a drink?"
Decartes replied, "I think not," and
**POOF** he disappeared.
Michael Palin: You were lucky! We
lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank! We
used to have to get up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the
newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in,
week out, for six pence a week, and when we got home, our dad would
slash us to sleep with his belt!
Graham Chapman: Luxury! We used to have
to get up out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the
lake, eat a handful of hot grubble, work twenty hours a day at mill,
for two pence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the
head and neck with a broken bottle, ...if we were lucky
Terry Jones: Well, of course, we had it
tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of
the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat
half a handful of freezing cold grubble, work twenty-four hours a day
at mill for four pence every six years, and when we got home, our dad
would slice us in two with a breadknife!
Eric Idle: Right! I had to get up in the
morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed,
eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and
pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home,
our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing
Hallelujah!
Michael Palin: Aah. And you trying to
tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!
- The Four Yorkshiremen - Monty Python
"I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high!' "
--Bruce Baum
"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves." "How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why you human beings don't."
-James Thurber
Conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires, but what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes; that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit.
-Mumia Abu Jamal (African American activist on death row)
Dissidents are bitterly condemned as 'anti-American' as demonstrated by the fact that they condemn the evils of the American system instead of marching in parades denouncing the crimes of official enemies. But they are not severely punished, at least if they are privileged and of the right color. Again, the concept 'anti-American' is particularly striking, the very hallmark of a totalitarian mentality.
-Noam Chomsky
Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven.
- Yiddish proverb
Evolution is God's way of issuing upgrades.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
-Mark Twain
God: Santa Claus for adults.
-Rob Earhart
I want to be a lifeguard for the gene pool. You! Out of the pool!
-Sean Simmons
If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?
-Shatter
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.
-Chuck Reid
It's recently come to Fortune's attention that scientists have stopped using laboratory rats in favor of attorneys. Seems that there are not only more of them, but you don't get so emotionally attached. The only difficulty is that it's sometimes difficult to apply the experimental results to humans.
-unknown
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
-Jessica Parcells
Only dead fish swim with the stream.
-unknown
Organization and good planning are just crutches for people that can't handle stress and caffeine.
-unknown
Right Wing Politicians, Right Wing Think Tanks, Right Wing Talk Show Hosts, Right Wing Talking Heads, the "Religious" Right and Right Wing Media All Agree There is no "Vast Conservative Conspiracy"
-The Smudge Report
The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left.
-anonymous
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
-anonymous
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
-Dante
There is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. And any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allow my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
-John Swinden, 1953, then head of the New York Times, when asked to toast an independent press in a gathering at the National Press Club
Trust in God, but tie your camel.
-Arab proverb
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
-Hermann Goering, Hitler's No. 2 man, before being sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
-Jeannette Rankin
Address comments and corrections to John Locke
Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)