 fortune index all fortunes
| | #3601 | | "All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
-- Noam Chomsky
| | | #3602 | | "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked."
-- John Gall, _Systemantics_
| | | #3603 | | "In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it
came up and bit him on his Internet."
-- Ross M. Greenberg
| | | #3604 | | I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
appears to me at present".
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
| | | #3605 | | "If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
almost all occurences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."
-- Herbie Blashtfalt
| | | #3606 | | "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-- Marvin the paranoid android
| | | #3607 | | Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| | | #3608 | | "There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
"A mere abacus. Mention it not."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| | | #3609 | | "But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
Indefatigable?"
"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| | | #3610 | | If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
would be a Fortune-500 company.
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be
able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95.
If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still
be using autocoder and running compile decks.
-- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
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