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Quotes

This is a sample quotations file for the Cookbook.RandomQuote page. Each quotation is delimited by anchors, which can also be used to identify the quotes in an (:include:) markup.

True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.

Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.

Linus' Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Perspective is worth 50 IQ points.

Las Vegas is a SimCity game gone horribly wrong.

Most men would rather die, than think. Many do.

Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad man.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

I can do it more quickly if you don't keep asking me questions.

This place stinks like a pair of armoured trousers after the Hundred Years War. Baldrick, have you been eating dung again?

I'm as poor as a church mouse that's just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.

Red Baron: How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing. For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you it is the basis of an entire culture.

Oh, God. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more.

Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsichord singing 'subtle plans are here again'.

I fear the words "I have a cunning plan" are rapidly marching towards this conversation with ill-deserved confidence.

Right, good morning team. My name is Edmund Blackadder and I'm the new Minister in charge of religious genocide. Now, if you play straight with me you'll find me a considerate employer, but cross me and you'll find that under this playful boyish exterior beats the heart of a ruthless sadistic maniac.

And in Genoa, 'tis now the fashion to pin a live frog to the shoulder braid, stand in a bucket and go "bibble" at passers by.

Sir Walter Raleigh: You'd never dare. Why, 'round the Cape, the rain beats down so hard it makes your head bleed!
Edmund: So, some sort of hat is probably in order

The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr. Brain has long since departed, hasn't he, Perce ?

Oh, God, God, God. What on Earth was I drinking last night? My head feels like there's a Frenchman living in it.

Baldrick, that is by far and away, and without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most contemptible plan in the history of the universe. On the other hand, I hear the sound of disembowelling cutlasses being sharpened, and it's the only plan we've got, so if you will excuse me, gentlemen...

Mrs Miggins: Bonjour, monsieur - it's French.
Edmund: So is eating frogs, cruelty to geese and urinating in the street, but that's no reason to inflict it on the rest of us.

Doesn't anyone know? We hate the French! We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field at Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?

No he won't, Baldrick. Either I think up an idea, or, tomorrow, we die – which, Baldrick, I have to tell you, I have no intention of doing, because I want to be young and wild, and then I want to be middle-aged and rich, and then I want to be old and annoy people by pretending that I'm deaf.

He's mad. He's mad. He's madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year's Mr Madman competition.

General Melchett: That's the spirit, George. If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Firing squad sergeant: Is there any particular area you'd like us to go for? We can aim anywhere...
Edmund: ...Well, in that case...just above the top of my head might be a good spot...

I think I'll write my tombstone - Here lies Edmund Blackadder, and he's bloody annoyed.

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd.

I've got a plan so cunning, you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right.

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

We must beware of needless innovations, especially when guided by logic.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

The fellow who thinks he knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who do.

Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C.

Las Vegas is a SimCity game gone horribly wrong.

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.

63% of all statistics are made up... including this one.

Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.

All of your co-workers are fools. You must learn to pity and tolerate them.

An optimist is simply a pessimist with no job experience.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.

I'll be happy to make these unnecessary changes to this irrelevant document.

Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams.

Stupidity is like nuclear power; it can be used for good or evil.

Technical people respond to questions in three ways: It is technically impossible (meaning: I don't feel like doing it); It depends (meaning: abandon all hope of a useful answer); The data bits are flexed through a collectimizer which strips the flow-gate arrays into virtual message elements (meaning: I don't know).

The entire economic system depends on the fact that people are willing to do unpleasant things in return for money.

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as "nutty methods." Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as "a complete waste of time."

There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance.

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.

We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.

When did ignorance become a point of view?

Work is for losers. A winner says 'That's on my list' and never commits to a deadline.

Your brain is like your stomach in the sense that if it's empty, you're willing to put anything in there to fill it up.

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work.

The important thing is never to stop questioning.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

A jury consists of twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

[to the cow] Wow, you have got a great pair of legs! In fact, she's got two great pairs of legs!

Kermit, cancel my bread impersonation act! They didn't deliver my poppy seeds. You wouldn't want me to walk out there NAKED, would you?

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Linus' Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

All I know is I'm not a Marxist.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Of those who say nothing, few are silent.

The nice thing about standards is, there are so many to choose from.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Nobody in Rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.

I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes.

You guys line up alphabetically by height, and you guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle.

I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to.

He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.

It's basically the same, just darker.

I told him, 'Son, what is it with you. Is it ignorance or apathy?' He said, 'David, I don't know and I don't care.'

I want to reach for 150 or 200 points this season, whichever comes first.

Andy Ellis - the 21 year old, who turned 22 a few weeks ago.

Colin has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator.

He scored that try after only 22 seconds - totally against the run of play.

We actually got the winning try three minutes from the end but then they scored.

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.

That kick was absolutely unique, except for the one before it which was identical.

I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.

Sure there have been injuries and deaths in rugby - but none of them serious.

If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.

I would not say he (Rico Gear) is the best left winger in the Super 14, but there are none better.

I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat.

Murray Deaker: Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography? Tana Umaga: On what?

Well, either side could win it, or it could be a draw.

Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer.

One who sits between two chairs may easily fall down.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

You must believe in free will; there is no choice.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

All my life I've wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

The person who has no opinion will seldom be wrong.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.

Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Powerful you have become, Dooku. The Dark Side I sense in you.

When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Always in motion is the future.

Around the survivors a perimeter create.

Size matters not.

May the force be with you.

Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.

A Jedi's strength flows from the Force.

Help you I can, yes.

Strong am I with the force.

Agree with you the council does. Your apprentice Skywalker will be.

Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.

Lost a planet Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing.

There are two secrets to success in life:

1. Never tell anyone everything you know.
2. .....................................................

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing

Some people would rather die than think

Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting the different results

 The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

For years there has been a theory that millions of monkeys typing at random on millions of typewriters would reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. The Internet has proven this theory to be untrue.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

In the old days, people robbed stagecoaches and knocked off armoured trucks. Now they're knocking off servers.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.

In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee. That will do them in.

At some point...we must have faith in the intelligence of the end user.

There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.

Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.

Save early, save often.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

If you tried to read every document on the web, then for each day's effort you would be a year further behind in your goal.

The last good thing written in C++ was the Pachelbel Canon.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

Any science or technology which is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product.

The Internet is a great way to get on the net.

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1 1/2 tons.

From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it.

Technology is like fish. The longer it stays on the shelf, the less desirable it becomes.

How could this be a problem in a country where we have Intel and Microsoft?

The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it.

To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.

"Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing."

"Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable."

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction"

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

"You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete."

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."

When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown.

Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.

If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake.

Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow.