Geoff's Amazing Home Page

Quotes

You can't imagine what you've lost when you've lost your imagination.

Anonymous graffiti, Toronto

War isn't fought to decide who is right

but who is left.

Unknown

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''

We are on this planet to behave. nothing owns anything, and we own nothing. therefor we already own everything. why would you want to conquer that, which is already yours?

Algon, Inverted Logic 1

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

Alan Ashley-Pitt

To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the ``scientific'' establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it.

Isaac Asimov

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

Charles Babbage

The real danger from advertising is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions: the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and respect for the integrity of man.

Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy

Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.

J. Bartlett Brebner

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.

Albert Camus

``I don't know what you mean by `glory,' '' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ``Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' ''

``But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,' '' Alice objected.

``When I use a word,'' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ``it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.''

``The question is,'' said Alice, ``whether you can make words mean so many different things.''

``The question is,'' said Humpty Dumpty, ``which is to be master -- that's all.''

Lewis Carrol, ``Through the Looking Glass''

In recent times, modern science has developed to give mankind, for the first time in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking away from someone else.

Karl Taylor Compton (MIT president), 1938

Why explore the Universe? It is almost ironic that we should have to ask this question because it is almost as though we have to apologize for our highest attributes ... we went to Mars, not because of our technology, but because of our imagination.

Norman Cousins

to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

E. E. Cummings

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

Edsgar Dykstra

Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.

Aubrey Eben

There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence.

``The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII''

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Your surmise that after my departure my errors might be adored as holy relics amused me enormously, but I don't believe it. On the contrary, I think that my followers will hasten to demolish as swiftly as possible everything that is not safe and sound in what I leave behind.

Sigismund Freud, in a letter to Carl Jung, 1909

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Galileo

Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs.

Bill Gates

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense--the debate about angels on pinheads--makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

Stephen Jay Gould, ``Wide Hats and Narrow Minds''

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

The great events of an age appear, to those living through them, as backdrops only to the vastly more compelling dramas of their own lives, and how could it be otherwise?

Guy Gavriel Kay, ``Lord of Emperors''

We were all lying down on the ground and a cameraman from a Belgrade TV station crawled up to me and, as he put his camara in my face, asked, ``Who fired the first shot?''

I answered, ``Some S.O.B. 400 years ago.''

Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, in an interview with ``The Globe and Mail''

You put all the 400 countries in the world into a blender machine (called Internet) and churn, blend and mince them with blades rotating at high speeds, then out comes the tasty "Nectar Juice" called Linux which will be poured into glasses and served to all 6 billion persons!!

MilkywayGalaxy Publications

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Seen on a Missisauga Transit bus

Truth faced leaves a strange taste

When joy and sadness meet

A country rain on a city street

This life is bittersweet

Moxy Früvous, ``Bittersweet''

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

John Von Neumann, circa 1949

The mass media is supported and sustained by commercial entities. And corn flakes and Shakespeare are simply not kissing cousins. Leonard Bernstein and living bras are incompatible. And you cannot sustain adult, probing, meaningful drama when the proceedings are interrupted every twelve minutes by a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet paper.

Rod Serling

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.

Adlai Stevenson

Faith is a candle where Reason is the sun;

No one needs a candle: until darkness falls.

Sean Stewart, ``Nobody's Son''

And I have lost people. Too many people. Lost them to chance, violence, brutality beyond belief; I've seen all the senseless, ignoble acts of ``god's noblest creature.'' And I am incapable of forgiving. My feelings are with G'Kar, hand sliced open, saying of the drops of blood flowing from that open wound, ``How do you apologize to them?'' ``I can't.'' ``Then I cannot forgive.''

As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it's only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it's gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each.

So I cannot forgive. Which makes the notion of writing a character who CAN forgive momentarily attractive...because it allows me to explore in great detail something of which I am utterly incapable. I cannot fly, so I would write of birds and starships and kites; I cannot play an instrument, so I would write of composers and dancers; and I cannot forgive, so I would write of priests and monks and minbari....

J. Michael Straczynski

Families, when a child is born

Want it to be intelligent.

I, through intelligence,

Having wrecked my whole life,

Only hope the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he will crown a tranquil life

By becoming a Cabinet Minister

Su Tung-p'o

``Freedom'' has no meaning of itself. There are always restrictions, be they legal, genetic, or physical. If you don't believe me, try to chew a radio signal.

Kelvin Throop III

There's certainly a strong case for people really disliking Microsoft. Most of that is because their operating systems really suck.

Linus Torvalds

A thousand explanations is as good as no explanation at all.

Stephan Zielinski

What happens to your fist when you open your hand?

Zen Buddhism

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