quotes: t

But in some ways, a general ignorance of Unix seems to help drive a certain romantic
ideal -- an ideal that keeps the word "Unix" in very active circulation even outside of
geek circles. To the typical Mac end-user, Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong.
It's made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old. Unix is like a brawny
Soviet on a Constructivist poster, swinging his hammer for his comrades. We don't know
why it's good, but damn if our hearts aren't stirred by the weighty, solidly angular
goodness of it all.
-Table and Chair, Slashdot
Haven't you heard our motto - 'United we sort of come apart at the seams, but Welded we
stick together pretty well' ?
-tabron@brandeis.bitnet
Read. Learn. Evolve.
-talk.bizarre credo
To really understand programmers you must understand artists. Artists are almost always
"whack jobs" (or at least, that's how the outside world perceives them). After all, what
kind of whacko spends a week carrying an 80-pound bag of camera gear through the high
Sierra? Ansel Adams.
-The Talking Moose
I admire your courage to bring us this news.... But as with all bearers of such news... such
blasphemy to the existence of the Jihad of DOOM, we will have to cause you severe pain
and dump multiple cores into your site through electronic mail.... Such is our anger....
Hard drives in your campus will spin faster than their allowable rate, burning out
gigabytes of your precious memory, plastic will burn, metal shall melt.... Such is our
woe..... The equipment in your very lab shall be disassmebled, as will all those who are in
the lab. No one shall escape the wrath of the humble followers of Doom..... Such is to
come.....
-Kane Tan
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from. Furthermore, if
you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model.
-Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks"
Pop quiz, hot shot: You're going to award ceremonies all year long, you keep losing to
Forrest Gump; it's really annoying the hell out of you. What do you do? You go to the
MTV awards!
-Quentin Tarantino
No no no. It's only THE road trip vehicle if I'm in it. That's not just me being conceited. I
improve gas milage and trip time.
-Tom Tarka
To some degree all movies are pretentious; the very idea that the events in our lives have
pronounced trajectories is pivotal to the story-telling process while having very little to
do with reality. It's also no leap to suggest that the impetus for creating art is ego-based.
Things have definitely gotten out of hand, though, when characters start pointlessly
gasping out loud at the writer/director's enormous willie.
-Paul Tatara
An interface is not a rave.
-taylor@wired.com
How long have you been wanting me to talk like a bot?
-taylor@wired.com
Ninety percent of good programming is resisting the temptation to be a dumb-ass.
-taylor@wired.com
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure
they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-Elizabeth Taylor
The rest of the world views the USA the way Silicon Valley views Microsoft. Except
with tanks.
-Brad Templeton
I also find that a well-timed, properly expressed and inflected simple taunt like, oh,
"Canadian" covers a lot of ground and saves valuable time one could better spend surfing
the Net.
-Michele Tepper
I have noticed that cats are little impressed by religion.
-Sherri Tepper
In the Norse mythology Loki originally was on the side of the rest of the gods, helping
them once or twice using a particularly nasty forms of trickery. He was a cunning
negotiator with a talent for technicalities. He was sort of the Norse equivalent of a
lawyer, no doubt the reason they tied him down in a pit dripping acidic venom on him.
-Martin Terman
The world is full of buttheads, you learn to live with them, except in California where
they tend to shoot each other on the highways...
-tfields@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Thaumaturgix was founded in New York City in 1994 by Peter Dolch, Moses Merchant,
and Yogen Sanghani; seasoned technology consultants all, with a broad range of talents
and skills. It was the first technology consulting to bring the U.S. stock exhange onto the
World Wide Web. The partners' first dictum, "don't pour coffee into the computer," still
echoes in our offices today.
-Thaumaturgix history
I never thought of sushi as a layer 2 option. Is that as opposed to "IP over carrier pigeon"
or "IP over barbed wire" or "IP over debt" (only offered by Exodus)?
-Rodney Thayer
Death is harsh and cruel... not some cute chick.
-The Maxx
I can't eat the baby, Larry, my helmet is on.
-Aaron Thies
There is nothing at all wrong with the English language, so far as I can see, but that may
only be because I cannot see ahead.
-Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
As your attourney I strongly advise you to tell me where you put the goddamn mescaline.
-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I always drive properly. A bit fast, perhaps, but always with consummate skill and a
natural feel for the road that even cops recognize. No cop was ever born who isn't a
sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those
cloverleaf freeway interchanges.
-Hunter S. Thompson
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always
worked for me.
-Hunter S. Thompson
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel
and shallow money trench through the heart of journalism, a long puke-stained hallway
where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs for no good reason.
-Hunter S. Thompson
We are, after all, professionals.
-Hunter S. Thompson
I know nothing.
-Ken Thompson
If you have been to Moscow during Soviet times, you will probably remember paying
almost nothing to be ignored by a waiter in a restaurant. Now you pay a fortune to be
ignored by ten waiters.
-Ken Thompson
Just think -- IBM and DEC in the same room -- and we did it. Makes you feel warm
inside.
-Ken Thompson
Maybe I should have screwed up.
-Ken Thompson
When in doubt, use brute force
-Ken Thompson
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
-Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good; be good for something.
-Henry David Thoreau
Now. Or never.
-Henry David Thoreau
Such accidents are very common in our family.
-Prince Thrakhath, Wing Commander II
There is no such thing as a functional illiterate.
-Kelvin Throop
The strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.
-Thucydides
"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
I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for
simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he
also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and
sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
-James Thurber
BOZO + PhD = GOD
-Chris Thyberg
Sorry for the disaster. And thanks for your patience!
-Chris Thyberg
Must...defy...laws...of...physics...
-The Tick
You wanna live? Get in the car. You wanna die? Get in the car.
-Freddy Tiffany, Double Take
A bazooka is the skeleton key of the impatient.
-Will Timmins
The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of sour taste is blandness. There is no
opposite of spam and I think I'm glad.
-Frank Tinsman
What could be better than caffeine and sugar combined in a hot liquid package? A
package of caffeine, sugar, salt and grease that's what. But until I can find a chocolate-
bacon-burger mocha, I'll just have to get my salt and grease elsewhere.
-Greg Titus, Omni Development
Arisitotle claimed that beyond the society of Man exists only Beasts and Gods. Which do
you choose to be?
-tjl93003@uconnvm.uconn.edu
They're my friends, my toys, and they have OFF switches. All these things are good.
-tkil@scrye.com
An old expression suggests that when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. Excel, of course, is not a hammer. It is a Swiss Army knife. Unfortunately, all the
blades except one are broken.
-Bruce Tognazini
I must first reveal my personal bias in this discussion, since I worship at the First Church
of PDF Really Sucks.
-Bruce Tognazzini
Regardless of the source of the problem, you can detect its presence by the two great
engineering lies: 1. Your design cannot be implemented using the current technology. 2.
Your design can be implemented, and it will be in the very next release. (The third great
engineering lie is, of course, I promise to debug the code before I check it in.) Engineers
lead dull lives.
-Bruce Tognazini
You do not understand, Grasshopper. The purpose of the icons, the purpose of the entire
OS X look and feel, is to keep the customer happy during that critical period between the
time of sale and the time the check clears.
-Bruce Tognazini
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-Leo Tolstoy
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity,
can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige
them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to
colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread
by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
-Leo Tolstoy
The problem with the rat race is even if you win you're still a rat.
-Lily Tomlin
Standin' on the corner, in a white godfather hat. He drives a long, black, gangster
Cadillac. He can steal a broad's mind, man, in three or four minutes. It's not how long you
talk, brother, it's what you put in it.
-Too Short, "Shorty the Pimp"
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so
loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but
you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded
about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your
underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, In
order to assure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date
with my daughter, I will take my electric staple gun and fasten your trousers securely in
place around your waist.
-Frank Topar
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of
some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I
WILL kill you.
-Frank Topar
In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other
issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an
indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only
word I need from you on this subject is "early."
-Frank Topar
My daughter claims it embarrasses her to come downstairs and find me attempting to get
her date to recite these eight simple rules from memory. I'd be embarrassed too--there are
only eight of them, for crying out loud! And, for the record, I did NOT suggest to one of
these cretins that I'd have these rules tattooed on his arm if he couldn't remember them. (I
checked into it and the cost is prohibitive.) I merely told him that I thought writing the
rules on his arm with a ball point might be inadequate--ink washes off--and that my wood
burning set was probably a better alternative.
-Frank Topar
If Bush wins, we will have a Commander-in-Thief.
-Denise Topaz
I am Pentium of Borg. Arithmetic is irrelevant. Prepare to be approximated.
-Andrew Toppan
All the technology that people were so hot on started in basements and garages. There
still will be crazy people in their basements trying to change the world, and some of them
will even do it.
-Linus Torvalds
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
-Linus Torvalds
I think my "plan" says something like "World domination. Fast." But we'll see.
-Linus Torvalds
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places,
just write a Unix operating system.
-Linus Torvalds
Technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover
and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them. If somebody sues you,
you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
-Linus Torvalds
The more I see of it, the more I get the feeling that I'd have multiple ulcers within
minutes of getting involved in the business side. It's kind of like watching giraffes
making love on the Discovery Channel. You definitely don't want to get involved, but it's
kind of fascinating to follow.
-Linus Torvalds
Too bad if 90 percent of it is stupid. That's how creativity works.
-Linus Torvalds
World domination. Fast... and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below
zero outside.
-Linus Torvalds
I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time
for tobacco since.
-Arturo Toscanini
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the
public with the public's money
-Alexis de Toucqueville
Phoebe Sengers is either the most wickedly skilled baiter of OpBB/Discussion readers
I've ever seen, or a complete fruitcake. I can't figure out which.
-David S. Touretzky
... so, given that the brain is built out of really crummy hardware, I mean, worse than the
stuff you buy at Radio Shack ...
-David S. Touretzky
Unix encourages, by egregious example, the most irresponsible programming style
imaginable. No error checking. No error messages. No conscience. If a student here
turned in code like that, I'd flunk his ass.
-David S. Touretzky
I started to see people as little lonesome, water based, pink meat, life forms pushing air
through themselves and making noises that the other little pieces of meat seemed to
understand...I don't think I was 'mad', I was just confused.
-Devin Townsend
I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists'
ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really
happened, that it's all just made up by the author.
-Tom Townsend, Metropolitan
But you may find that blood is not enough.
-Pete Townshend
Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But
compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture
and death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his
fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the
other defendants were all depraved perverts - if the leaders of the Third Reich were
sadistic monsters and maniacs - these events would have no more moral significance than
an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress
of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into
the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination.
No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of
their political beliefs... The murder of children... How easily that can happen. There are
those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country. Of survival.
The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of
one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before
the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we
stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being.
-Spencer Tracy as Judge Dan Haywood in Judgment at Nuremberg
As you cruise the information highway, do not be afraid of the strange men you see
walking on the shoulders, muttering to themselves. They work for us.
-Tony Tribby
nothing but angry, angsty industrial music ..."rrraarrr!"... GEETARS ..."unnggghh!"...
DISTORTED VOCALS...."ich ich ich"..LYRICS IN GERMAN
-Tony Tribby
Think of all the things you wish you could be doing. Make a list of the reasons why
you're not doing them. Cross off all the reasons that are really just excuses. Now ask
yourself what's _really_ stopping you...
-Tony Tribby
Well, after our 1-week hiatus, we're back tonight with our usual mix of cutting-edge
electronic music and wonky suburban restaurant decor.
-Tony Tribby
While I can now say that it _is_ true that you can catch more flies with honey than with
vinegar (actually didn't catch _any_ with vinegar, but I only decided at the last minute to
try it), I am here to tell you that you can catch _a lot_ of flies, _very quickly_, with a
high-powered vacuum cleaner.
-Tony Tribby
...the detailed discussions American presidential candidates engage in about programs are
virtually meaningless. Partly because of the separation of powers, the new President
almost never signs into law the progams he promised. When you look at it that way, the
only really important thing about George W. Bush's Social Security plan was that he
didn't seem to understand it.
-Calvin Trillin
Is that so? Well let me tell you what I believe: I believe that if you don't get off the
keyboard and start using the mouse, you'll always play like a little girl!
-Trinity, cr0bar's The Matrix
"Neo, this isn't going to work. Guns don't kill people, people kill people." "No, Trinity.
Guns don't kill people, I kill people."
-Trinity and Neo, cr0bar's The Matrix
Live long and prosper. If anything goes wrong, nuke the whole site from orbit. It's the
only way to be sure.
-Ryan Troll
Wow. I think reading unhinged is more educational than going to class.
-Ryan Troll
There is a limit to the practical application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all
the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question
them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and an accident
threatens.
-Leon Trotsky
Is an existentialist something to eat?
-Brian Trotter
Mt. Dew good, yellow snow bad!
-Brian Trotter
Well adjusted: being able to make the same mistake over and over and over and over
without getting upset.
-Brian Trotter
... an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would
sneer at....
-Dave Trowbridge on MS-DOS
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
-Harry S. Truman
The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a
communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.
-Donald Trump
no one can accept without question the philosophical positions of anyone (no matter how
dear otherwise) who has fed you stained creamed beets from a jar of Gerbers, and
expected you to like it.
-Michael Tucker
A friend is someone who knows everything about you and likes you in spite of it.
-Mark Twain
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-Mark Twain
Better to let people think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
-Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-Mark Twain
Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the mastery of fear.
-Mark Twain
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was
here first.
-Mark Twain
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-Mark Twain
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they
should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and
indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set
about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries
and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and
washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there
was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh
or to cry.
-Mark Twain
Each place has its own advantages - Heaven for the climate and Hell for society.
-Mark Twain
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please
-Mark Twain
Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might feel proud to call his own, but I wish to
sell out. I have sported that kind of jewelry long enough.
-Mark Twain
How come we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the
person involved.
-Mark Twain
I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.
-Mark Twain
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly
and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
-Mark Twain
If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.
-Mark Twain
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the
principal difference between a dog and a man.
-Mark Twain
In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards.
-Mark Twain
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, _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
Profanity often lends itself to contentment not found even at prayer.
-Mark Twain
Reader, imagine you were an idiot. And imagine you were a member of Congress. But I
repeat myself.
-Mark Twain
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than
by the ones you did do.
-Mark Twain
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-Mark Twain