Con Buttons

Remember school? The place you go to learn to communicate, and all they do is tell you to shut up?

The only person who ever actually listens to both sides of the argument is the guy in the next apartment.

Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check?

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

One good suit is worth a thousand resumes.

The Truth is Out There... but I lost the URL.

Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.

The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.

Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.

The real problem with hunting elephants is carrying the decoys.

We have enough youth. How about a fountain of SMART?

Friends don't let friends vote Republican

When you're in love, you're at the mercy of a stranger.

I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.

UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist."

"Criminal Lawyer" is a redundancy.

Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

He who laughs last thinks slowest.

BOMB SQUAD: If you see me running... you better catch up!

Taxes, n.: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an extension.

Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on a disk around here somewhere.

We were born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

Faith Manages...... But Willow is in Tech Support

Cover me. I'm changing lanes.

Save California; when you leave take someone with you.

Eschew obfuscation.

Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.

Never play leap frog with a unicorn.

Few things are as ego-boosting as being kicked out of an anarchy convention for unruly behavior.

Each one of us, if we are really lucky, meets one person that changes our world. That person is called a friend.

Do not knock on death's door. Ring the bell and run. He really hates that.

You see things and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were, and say, "Why not?"

Sorry, Dave, you can't have an orgy by yourself. It's one of the rules."

When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is difficult to remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

Seminars, n.: From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.

With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm.

It's okay to call someone stupid. Just don't prove it.

Blessed are the meek, for they make great scapegoats.

The sooner you get behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

Be wary of geeks bearing GIFs.

Don't race trains to crossings. If it is a tie you lose.

It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's what you're taking for it...

It's as bad as you think and they are out to get you.

Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.

It's been lovely, but I have to scream now.

Beautify Texas. Put a Yankee on a bus.

You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.

Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.

Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check?

We don't know who discovered water, but we're fairly sure it wasn't a fish.

Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.

Laws of the Universe

"Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in."

"Fuch's Warning: If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well enough to travel."

"Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it."

"Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases."-- Harvard Law

"Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups." -- Wethern's Law

"Never attribute to malice anything that can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor

"The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it." -- The Roman Rule

"No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory." -- Finagle's Second Law

"No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less." -- Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom

Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it
2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately.

On Writing

"Imagine if novelists had to deal with this. I'm sorry Mr. Tolkien, but Frodo has decided to leave. You'll have to pick one of your other characters to take his role." -- Scott Edelman, on the problems of bringing one's vision to television.

"Idealism is what I write about. I just do it in a nasty and cynical way." -- Warren Ellis

"Plot Coupons: The basic building blocks of the quest-type fantasy plot. The 'hero' collects sufficient plot coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off to the author for the ending. Note that 'the author' can be substituted for 'the Gods' in such a work: 'The Gods decreed he would pursue this quest.' Right, mate. The author decreed he would pursue this quest until sufficient pages were filled to procure an advance." -- Dave Langford [Turkey City Lexicon]

"If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap" -- Dean Koontz

"The profic bunnies are very small, and can't stand up to the fanfic bunnies. They're pretty much getting beat up for their milk money." -- Celli

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James D. Nicoll

"So. English is the Spike of the language world. I'm entertained." -- Kiki

"The voices in my head, which I used to think were just passing through, seem to have taken up residence." -- Elizabeth Wurtzel

"The trick for me is being able to tell when I really do have to go away and leave myself alone about a story for a while, and when Iım just trying to get out of the hard work of writing, and need to be got after with a stick. " -- Robin McKinley on writing

"Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing." -- Meg Chittenden

"[She's] considering joining some slash lists and demanding to be able to post het fic there because, dammit, it's her civil right and besides, they're all prejudiced against straight people." -- anonymous

"My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which, being finished, here the story ends;
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun." -- Byron

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done." -- Steven Wright

"Their canon met my imagination and was outgunned." -- Storm, FORKNI-L

"If you practice being fictional, you discover that "characters" are as real as people with bodies and heartbeats..." -- Storm & friend, FORKNI-L

"Writing is easy - just stare at the page until your forehead bleeds" -- Gillian Horvath

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." -- Mark Twain

On Politics and the World

"The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change." -- Alfred North Whitehead

"President Bush will give Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face military action, administration sources say. Iraqi foreign minister says Saddam won't leave, suggests Bush leave office instead." -- CNN headline bullet

"You read about all these terrorists--most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10-15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster Video; if you are two days late with a video, those people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration." -- unknown

"As I watched fellow members of God's Own Party throw themselves before live television cameras this evening to approximate outrage over a Nixon-appointed circuit judge taking umbrage in the recitation that we are one nation 'under God,' it struck me that it is rather less plausible that we are in fact 'one Nation' -- regardless of whom we may find ourselves under. Upon reflection, and after watching only a moment of daytime television, I actually found the suggestion rather insulting. " -- Mrs. Betty Bowers

"It's a wonder the government doesn't end up advertising in the paper. 'American People Seek Leader of Free World. Bright, articulate, over-35 citizen sought for exciting career: Travel the world; act as verbal target for Congress and late night talk show hosts; inhabit uniquely-shaped office for up to eight years. Please submit resume to CNN.'" -- Susan Douglas-Radford on the Presidency [Jo and Ryo]

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." -- Lily Tomlin

"History is like shampoo: exotic or generic, the last step is always 'repeat.' -- Mrs. Betty Bowers

"It is reported that President George W. Bush has asked Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to order a new recount of the Florida vote of last November. Bush now seems convinced that Al Gore really won and asks that he please please take over as quickly as possible."-- The Sludge Report, September 2001

"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." -- Oscar Wilde

"To an old leader will be born an idiot heir, weak both in knowledge and in war."-- Nostradamus

"Naturally, I'm terrified not to agree with everyone else, but the only reason I'm giving El Chico even a C-minus is because I figure he'll get worse, and we'll need the lower grades. " -- Molly Ivans on George W.

"Another scandal involving the ex-president. We'll tell you what happened, and what level of outrage you should be feeling." -- promo for The Daily Show

"...it's true, the election result is good for me. Bush is this stable hard target. It's as if Quayle had won. Plus you have the wonderful narrative of how he got where he now is. It took his brother, his father, his father's friends, the Florida Secretary of State and the Supreme Court. His entire life gives fresh meaning to the phrase 'assisted living.'" -- Gary Trudeau

"Anyone remember when Florida State versus Electoral College was an early-season game?" -- Dennis Miller, Monday Night Football

"I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!" -- Monty Python

"I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute." -- Rebecca West

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" -- Quentin Crisp

"Mr Speaker, I said the honorable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honorable member may place the punctuation where he pleases." -- R. B. Sheridan

"Try voting in Chicago. You definitely need to show ID."
"Well, sure. If you're going to vote in Chicago, you should have *proof* that you're dead." -- alt.society.generation-x

"True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it." -- F. Paul Wilson

"It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." -- Alfred Adler

"The plot seems simple enough, though: Aliens arrive from space and destroy Washington. But later they turn out to be hostile." -- Steve Jackson on ID4

"What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary." -- Richard Harkness

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -- William James

"We who are as good as you, swear to you who are no better than we, to accept you as our sovereign king and lord, provided you observe all our liberties and laws, but if not, not." -- Aragonese Oath of Allegiance

"Clinton reminds me of the water stain on the ceiling above my shower. Every morning I ask myself how much it's really bothering me, then I decide to leave it there for another four years." -- Scott Adams

"When...has a mugging case ever heard a defense attorney claim, 'Your Honor, the victim was dressed in an Armani suit and wearing a Rolex. Clearly he was begging to be assaulted.'" -- Peter David

"Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails." -- Clarence Darrow

"First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up." -- Alara Rogers

"Racism is insanity and there can be no legitimate conflict based on insanity." -- James Earl Jones

"Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang)." -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.

"And at some time, we need to be able to retire to a jury room, order coffee and donuts, and make snide comments about the attorneys' choice of ties. At least that's what we did last time I was on jury duty." -- Lady Charon, alt.callahans

"Make no laws whatever concerning speech and, speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license;" and they will define and define freedom out of existence." -- Voltarine de Cleyre

"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." -Rick Kelly

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government." -- attrib. Michael Palin

On Men and Women

"Nothing says loser like 'I was kicked out of a cult.'" -- Blind Date

"In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back." -- Katherine Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn

"Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you." -- Dave Barry

"The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't take it too seriously." -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

"As far as I'm concerned, there are two men -- and two men only -- who will never betray you. Their names are Ben and Jerry. Spend quality time with them. They are the best friends you will find in your time of sorrow." -- Donna Moss's Advice to the Lovelorn [Jo March]

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base." -- Dave Barry

"On the whole sex is less confusing than love, lust is less confusing than sex, and chocolate is less confusing than any of them... Chocolate is by far the safest bet in every respect, but sex is by far the most interesting." -- Jacky Fleming,"Falling In Love"

"Women take clothing much more seriously than men. I've never seen a man walk into a party and say "Oh, my God, I'm so embarrassed; get me out of here. There's another man wearing a black tuxedo." -- Rita Rudner

"Women want men to look the same. Especially at weddings -- that way, if the groom chickens out, all the guys take one step over. Note that the priest asks, 'Do you take THIS man?' " -- George's Addition to Rita

"Getting rid of a man without hurting his masculinity is a problem. "Get out" and "I never want to see you again" might sound like a challenge. If you want to get rid of a man, I suggest saying, "I love you...I want to marry you...I want to have your children." Sometimes they leave skid marks." -- Rita Rudner

"When you swear you're his, shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is infinite, undying,
Lady, make a note of this, one of you is lying!" -- Dorothy Parker

"According to a survey taken by the local newspaper, only 33 percent of all people get nervous about a first date. Methinks that 77 percent of the population are liars." -- TC, DDEB2

"This is all I can give -- suggestions and advice. COMMUICATE with each other. HONOR each other -- ALWAYS. You are willing to die for each other -- LIVE for each other. When you give each other your first kiss as husband and wife, you become an "Us," not a couple of "Mes." You no longer control your own life, because it belongs to your mate. REMEMBER THAT and LIVE THAT EVERY DAY. If you fail to do these simple things, you will pay for every second of joy with an hour of misery. But DO them, and even second of joy will become an hour of GLORY." -- alt.callahans, damned if I can remember who

"Falling in love is like catching knives. In time, you can learn to do it without hurting yourself every time. It's still a dangerous proposition, though." - russ

On Sports

Baseball chick standing next to four guys with letters painted on their chests: "I have the sign because they won't let me be a letter."

"An amazing discovery in Houston, TX yesterday -- the Bengals found the end zone." -- Jay Leno

"It was a nice scene just after the last out of the NLCS, Giants over Cardinals -- Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent hugging one another for a long moment, on their way to the World Series. Later, each had an attack of conscience and returned the other guy's wallet. " -- Scott Ostler

"The World Series has seen a lot of crazy things over the years ... but this had to be a first: Batboy saved by player, and everybody scores." -- Bruce Jenkins

"General rule of thumb: If Skip Bayless is nicer to the Bears than you are, it's time to chill out." -- someone on a mailing list

"Ahh yes, the Olympics . . . where the world comes together, looks around, and realizes it doesn't like itself all that much." -- Ray Ratto, ESPN, after the Russians and S. Koreans filed protests

"Actually, the Kiss and Cry Zone isn't quite right. A more accurate name would be the Kiss and Cry and Squirm and Have an Anxiety Attack in Full View of the Entire World During the Most Stressful Moment of Your Entire Life and God, Oh God, Oh, Please God, Let My Marks Be Good and Please Don't Let the Fat Cow Ukrainian Judge Be a Complete Communist Hag AND WILL YOU GET THAT FRIGGIN' CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE AND LEAVE ME IN PEACE, YOU DAMN VULTURES!!! Zone.... TV loves the Kiss and Cry Zone, because it can capture all the most basic human emotions -- joy, sorrow, anger, jealousy and hatred -- without paying all that money to strand seven wretched, dysfunctional humans on an island in the South Pacific. " -- Jim Caple on figure skating

"The sport [of short-track speed skating] is simple to follow. Six extremely small people, all unconvincingly dressed as super-heroes, charge round and round and a lot fall over. The answer is either not to go so fast, or to do it on something less slippery than ice." -- The London Times

"I love that it's hours and hours of barely clad men doing amazing physical things..." -- Olympic commentary from The 11th Hour Message board

"The discovery of ice on the moon has already sparked rumours of an NHL expansion team there next year." -- John Yaskowich

On Life

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." -- Lin Yu-t'ang

"Those that dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind
Wake in the day to find that all was but vanity;
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
For they may act their dream with open eyes and make it possible." -- T.E. Lawrence

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." -- Carl Jung

"Men who are embarking on passionate adulterous affairs that will land them in hell do not write to their elderly Uncle Blue and ask him what they should do. You know what you should do. You've been taught this since you were small, I presume. It isn't a problem of not knowing. It's a question of how much ignorance you can summon up so as to enable you to do what you know not to do. At various times in my life, I've been able to dumb myself down to remarkable depths and I assume you can too, if you put your mind to it." -- Garrison Keillor

"You start with a bag full of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck." -- from Australian Aviation Magazine

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw

"You see, life is like that. We change, that's all. You see, the guy I am now is not the guy I was then. If the guy I was then met the guy I am now, he'd beat the shit out of me. Those are the facts." -- SLC Punk

"Ninety percent of the time, things turn out better than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time, you had no right to expect that much." -- Augustine

"we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh and
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentle
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then and
in the end a summer with wild winds and
new friends will be. " -- anonymous

"Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers." -- an analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic

"Teabag Trauma {tee-bag tror-ma}: 1. The emotion experienced when the teabag falls off its little string into the cup of boiling water on a freezing cold morning when one is only half awake and desperately in need of tea only the teabag's still in it and fishing it out with a teaspoon while in that state is just too *complicated*, dammit! 2. Phrase used to describe a completely mundane, unthreatening domestic crisis that nevertheless totally devastates everyone involved." -- Dyce

"Everybody is somebody else's weirdo." -- Dykstra

"Chaos is when everything happens at once and the at once is all times and all places and the air in your body was once breathed by Mohammed and the atoms in your skin once formed a nebula and it's all happening in the instant that you speak...." -- ???

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

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

"Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it." -- Olivier

"It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke." -- Kierkegaard

"You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now." -- Lauren Bacall

"The fact that such pain exists cannot be allowed to stop me from finding what joy I can. There are too many windmills, and only one of me." -- UT, alt.callahans

"'Rabbit's clever,' said Pooh thoughtfully. 'Yes,' said Piglet, 'Rabbit's clever.' 'And he has Brain.' 'Yes,' said Piglet, 'Rabbit has Brain.' There was a long silence. 'I suppose,' said Pooh, 'that that's why he never understands anything.'" -The House at Pooh Corner

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams, 'Last Chance to See'

"Being a smartass requires wit; being a smartass *and* a flirt requires wit and timeing; being a smartass *and* a flirt *and* surviving it all requires wit, timeing, and knowing when to keep yer flippin' mouf shut!" -- Sailor Jim, alt.callahans

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again." -- F. P. Jones

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." -- Mark Twain

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." -- Ambrose Redmoon

"Trust everyone - but cut the cards." -- W.C. Fields

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - H. L. Mencken

"Nothing in this world can endure forever" -- last minute graffiti found on a wall in Pompeii

"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it." -- Goethe

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded by a sleep." -- from The Tempest

"And so faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." -- 1 Corinthians 13

"As long as sun and moon endure, luck's a chance, but trouble's sure" -- A.E. Houseman

"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive." -- Bugs Bunny

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw

"We are made from dust and light of a star." -- Loren Eisley

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." -- Mark Twain

"If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky." -- Louis Menand

"Wisdom is knowing when to RTFM - Common Sense is doing this out of sight of those that admire your wisdom." -- ???

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut" -- Ernest Hemingway

"There will be no peace. Fight on then, with such courage you have, and every unchivalrous dodge you know of, secure in your conscience on this: their cause, if they had one, means nothing to them now. They hate for hate's sake." -- W.H. Auden

"it's not easy, suddenly having someone hand you that kind of a load. I hope that none of you will tell me that I "didn't have to accept it". You'd be right in one sense; I didn't have to; but if I see you lying in the street, bleeding to death and walk by... may whatever gods there be have mercy on my soul, for that would be the day on which I would lose whatever soul I owned." -- Ben Okopnik, alt.callahans

"Don't go around saying that the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -- Mark Twain