| Life as we know it
is already odd and unsettling. So for
true surrealism, we are right back with
documentary photography. - Judy
Jones and William Wilson from An Incomplete
Education. |
| It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make
sense. - Mark Twain |
| We have met the enemy
and he is us. - Walt Kelly's Pogo |
| All of the significant battles are waged within the self. - Wu-men |
| Time, space, and causality
are only metaphors of knowledge, with
which we explain things to ourselves. - Friedrich Nietzsche |
| All pigs are equal,
but some pigs are more equal than others. - George Orwell |
| Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. - George Orwell |
| Vanity of vanities.
All is vanity. The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be; and that which
is done is that which shall be done: and
there is no new thing under the sun. - Ecclesiastes |
| To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose. - Ecclesiastes |
| Maintenance is more difficult than construction. Construction is more difficult than destruction. - Jeffrey Sward |
| Destruction is easier than construction. Construction is easier than maintenance. - Jeffrey Sward |
| The Supreme Court has
made its decision, now let them enforce
it. - President Andrew Jackson,
responding to the Supreme Court decision Worcester v. Georgia (1832). |
| No matter whether the constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns. -
Finley Peter Dunne as Mr. Dooley |
| A man has more fun wishing for the things he hasn't got than enjoying the things he has got. - Finley
Peter Dunne as Mr. Dooley |
| Trust everybody, but cut the cards. - Finley Peter Dunne as Mr. Dooley |
| [On] July 4, let's rethink what our "independence" means before it is too late. It is a road paved with good intentions.
We have a 1st Amendment, yet we no longer know what either truth or civility means. We have a 2nd Amendment, and 121 guns for each 100 of us. We are the richest country in the world, yet among industrialized ones, we are behind in healthcare and education.
We have abandoned creating a human "melting pot." So we are angry, sad, and frightened. We have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Los Angeles Times July 4, 2023, letter to the Editor by Lester Levine, Founder Common Good Government, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. |
| If a man wants to strangle
his wife and throw her in the kitchen
sink, let him do it any way he wants to.
If he's doing it awkwardly, or not the
way I'd do it, all right -- it's a good
job so long as he gets her into the sink,
completely strangled. - Lejaren
A. Hiller, Sr. |
| Today is the tomorrow
you worried about yesterday. Attributed
to Dale Carnegie. |
| A cynic is a man who
knows the price of everything but the
value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde |
| People are
just like farm equipment. They
rust out quicker
than they wear
out. – Colonel
Harlan Saunders |
| Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. -- Mark Twain |
| There are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar. - Mickey Spillane |
| As we grow older, we move from the illusion of certainty to the certainty of illusion.
- Paraphrased from a quote attributed to Sam Keen |
| His use of an accordion
section in his arrangements, steadfast
rhythmic beat, and sentimentalized tempi
imparted to his renditions a rudimentary
sound quality that made him a favorite
with undiscriminating audiences. - Nicolas Slomimsky writing about Lawrence
Welk. |
| Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin
pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate.
- Garrison Keillor |
| A wine maker and film maker are really not very different. Both are artists. Both leave a unique indelible mark on their work. - TCM promotional commercial (c. 2020) |
| We live in a world where losing your cellular phone is way more dramatic than losing your virginity. - Nick Bundle (2016) |
| Fashion is more usually a gentle progression of revisited ideas. - Bruce Oldfield |
| The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before
last. - George Bernard Shaw |
| The only constant in life is change. - Heraclitus |
| Do you destroy every vehicle you get into?
- Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond (007) in the motion picture GoldenEye |
| What is it with you and moving vehicles? - Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond (007) in the motion picture GoldenEye |
| I haven't seen Iowa people get so excited since the night Frank Gotch and Strangler Lewis lay on the mat for three and a half hours without moving a muscle. - Meredith Wilson, as Mayor Shinn in The Music Man. |
| Did you find anything missing? - Victor
Borge |
| Dropped my watch. -
Victor Borge |
| It ain't over till
it's over. - Yogi Berra |
| It's like deja vu all
over again. - Yogi Berra |
| When you come to a
fork in the road, take it. - Yogi
Berra |
| I knew I was going
to take the wrong train, so I left early.
- Yogi Berra |
| Nobody goes there any
more, it's too crowded - Yogi Berra |
| Baseball is ninety
percent mental. The other half is physical.
- Yogi Berra |
| Man was not made to
travel faster than a baseball - Yogi
Berra |
| If people don't want
to come to the ballpark, how are you gonna
stop them? - Yogi Berra |
| The future ain't what it used to be. - Yogi Berra |
| It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. - Yogi Berra |
| You can observe a lot by watching - Yogi
Berra |
| The quieter you become, the more you can hear. - Baba Ram Dass |
| It ain't nothing
until I call it - Attributed to both Charles Moran and Bill
Klem, major
league baseball umpires, referring
to the metaphysical existence of balls and strikes. |
| If you don't think you are out, read the morning newspaper - Bill McGowan,
major league baseball umpire. |
| Maybe I called it wrong, but it's official - Tom Connally, major league baseball umpire. |
| If you loose something you never had, how can you find it? - Paul
Clement |
| When the quotations of Yogi Berra and Paul Clement can be understood implicitly, then a
higher level of consciousness has been reached. - Jeffrey Sward |
| The order I found was the order of disorder. - William Saroyan |
| A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though
we do not love it - Dogen Zenji |
| If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you
expect to find it? - Dogen Zenji |
| All truth is very ordinary. - Brian Perkins |
| There is more than one path up the mountain. - Zen aphorism |
| There is always something wrong with everything. - Zen
aphorism |
| The cloud rises in the sky suddenly and then is gone without a trace. -- paraphrased from Ma-tsu |
| Drawing a pattern on the water is neither born nor passes away.-- paraphrased from Ma-tsu |
| Things are not what they seem nor are they otherwise.-- Lankavatara Sutra |
| Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.- William S. Gilbert |
| Water which is too pure has no fish. - Ts'ai Ken T'an |
| If you already knew the flame was fire then the meal was cooked a long time ago. - Hsin Hsin Ming |
| We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. - Lao Tzu |
| The cup must first be empty before it can be filled anew. - Jeffrey Sward |
| To be empty is to be empty of something - Zen aphorism |
| If you do not get it from yourself, where will you go for it? - Zen aphorism |
| The Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone. - Lao Tzu |
| Preoccupied with a single leaf you won't see the tree. - Zen aphorism |
| Although gold dust is precious, when it gets in your eyes, it obstructs your vision. - Hsi-Tang |
| A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving -- Lao Tsu |
| If you do not know
where you are going then you are certain
to get there - Jeffrey
Sward |
| If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else. - Yogi Berra |
| When you flee from a wolf you run into a bear. -- Finnish proverb |
| The best thing about remembering the past is forgetting what would have made you happy. - The
Dwarf |
| You sag more if you
have more to sag. - The
Dwarf |
| There are no guarantees in life. - The
Dwarf |
| Guarantees are not part of this world we live in - Jerry Brown, Jr. |
| A well-formed sense of denial
can overcome any
level of reality. - Jeffrey Sward |
| Ethics in business is an oxymoron. - Jeffrey Sward |
| Taxonomic lexicon is another word for thesaurus. - Jeffrey Sward |
| The best photographs on display at county fairs are inevitably taken by sixth graders. This is because sixth
graders have not yet had their aesthetics corrupted by The Gospel According to Eastman Kodak or other similar
expressions of vapid sentimentality. - Jeffrey
Sward |
| Photographs are
not real. Rather, photographs are
merely an abstraction of what
might once have existed. - Jeffrey
Sward. |
| You will never look like the girl in the magazine. The girl in the magazine doesn't look like the girl in the magazine. – Jessimae Peluso |
| You can not put nobility in the bank. - William D. Lee |
| in the long term, an increase in efficiency in resource use will generate an increase in resource consumption rather than a decrease. -- William Stanley Jevons noting a paradox |
| Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves
it. -- Mark Twain |
| All generalizations are false, including this one. -- Mark Twain |
| Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain |
| Don't let schooling interfere with your education. -- Mark Twain |
| In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
-- Mark Twain |
| It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. -- Mark Twain |
| Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." - Mark Twain |
| First get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure. - Mark Twain |
| And why are there two types of screwdrivers? -- Chris Erskine |
| France is wasted on the French. -- Chris Erskine |
| Common decency isn't so common. -- Chris Erskine |
| There is no culture in pop culture. -- Chris Erskine |
| There are three things folks don't like to do. One, go to the dentist. Two, go to the DMV. Three, do ADR. -- Greg Crawford, veteran ADR engineer. [ADR is Automated Dialogue Replacement via post-production.] |
| Technical rehearsals are more painful than childbirth -- attributed to Susan Egan |
| Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-- Frank Wilhoit |
| A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
-- Winston Churchill |
| There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. -- William James |
| Correlation does not imply causation. -- Statistical Aphorism |
| Do not confuse results with intent. - Paraphrased from Milton Friedman |
| Expectations are premeditated resentments. -- Paraphrased from Neil Strauss |
| Every cause produces more than one effect. -- Herbert Spencer |
| The cause is hidden, but the result is well known -- Ovid |
| The reverse side also has a reverse side -- Japanese proverb |
| The inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw
a man carrying an asthmatic pig under his arm.
Unfortunately, the man-made object never equaled the
purity of sound achieved by the pig. -- Alfred Hitchcock |
| Golf is a game invented by
the same people who think music
comes out of a bagpipe. - Anonymous. |
| I like pigs: cats look down on human beings, dogs look up to them, but pigs just treat
us as their equals. - Winston Churchill |
| In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since
the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must
always hold a lead. - Aristotle,
paraphrasing Zeno of Elea |
| That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before
it arrives at the goal. (Travel over any finite distance can neither be completed
nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.) - Aristotle, paraphrasing Zeno
of Elea |
| If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion
is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless. - Aristotle, paraphrasing Zeno of Elea |
| Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance. - Epicurus |
| Less is more - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe referring to the aesthetics of minimalist architectural
design. |
| Less is not more. More
is more. - Dolly Parton |
| Simplicity is complicated. - Jeffrey Sward |
| It costs a lot of money to look this cheap. - Dolly Parton |
| A lot of people have said I'd have probably done better in my career if I hadn't looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn't be blamed because you want to look pretty. . - Dolly Parton |
| The best things in life are really, really expensive. -- Chris Erskine |
| When I talk to a man, I can always tell what he's thinking by where he is looking.
If he is looking at my eyes, he is looking for intelligence. If he is looking at my mouth,
he is looking for wisdom. But if he is looking anywhere else except my chest he's looking for another man. - Dolly Parton |
| I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know that I'm not dumb. I also know I'm
not blonde. - Dolly Parton |
| Find out who you are, and do it on purpose. - Dolly Parton |
| A need to devour, punish, humiliate or surrender seems to be a primal part of human nature, and it's certainly a big part of sex. - Charlotte Rampling |
| Uh uh. I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk? - Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry. |
| Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner. - Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley in Heat. |
| Say what you mean and mean what you say - Paraphrased from Lewis Carroll as the March Hare |
| To those who understand,
no explanation is necessary, to those
who do not understand, no explanation
is possible. - Traditional |
| Man, if you gotta ask,
you'll never know. - Louis Armstrong |
| If you have to ask if the earth moved, then it probably didn't. - The
Dwarf |
| The Dwarf is a wisp of gossamer, the scent of lily of the valley, and the trumpet voice
of the penguin. - Jeffrey Sward |
| Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don’t interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away. - Ajahn Chah |
| Life is the only thing worth living for. - Wu-men |
| Life is a can of tuna. It's messy. It stinks. You can fit all the good bits in one bowl. Some cans are better than others and every now and then a bone pops out. But you still eat it. - Darby Conley as Bucky in Get Fuzzy |
| Life is a meaningless
experience into which we all try to imbue
as much meaning as possible. - The
Dwarf |
| Life is a stagnant pool where the only diversion is swatting mosquitoes. - The
Dwarf |
| Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. - Shunryu Suzuki |
| Life is being forced to participate in a drama and role not of your choosing which ends abruptly and badly. - Jeffrey Sward |
| Life is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a
buffalo in the wintertime, and the little shadow which runs across the grass and
loses itself in the sunset. -
Crowfoot Blackfoot |
| Begin Shakespeare Section |
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
for grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.
- William Shakespeare, King John |
The instruments of darkness tell us truths
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth |
Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is
nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it
so.
To me, it is a prison.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet |
O, how full of briars is this working-day world
- William Shakespeare, Rosalind |
The play's the thing
- William Shakespeare. Hamlet |
The canker blooms have
full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 54 |
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar |
|
The crow doth sing as sweetly
as the lark,
When neither is attended, and
I think
The nightingale, if she should
sing by day,
When every goose is cackling,
would be thought
No better a musician than the
wren.
How many things by season season'd
are
To their right praise and true
perfection!
- William
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
|
Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
-
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice |
What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet
and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night |
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,
sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet |
Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment
- William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew |
For I have sworne thee fair, and thought thee bright
Who
are as black as hell as dark as night
.- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 147 |
For night-owls shriek where mounting larks
should sing.
- William Shakespeare, Richard II |
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances.
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It |
To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion.
But shall we make the welkin dance indeed?
Shall we
rouse the night-owl in a catch
that
will draw three souls out of one weaver?
Shall we do that?
- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night |
To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep—
To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet |
She should have died
hereafter;
There would have been a time for such
a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief
candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- William Shakespeare , Macbeth |
| End Shakespeare Section |
Toda luna, todo año,
Todo día, todo viento
Camina, y pasa también.
También, toda sangre llega
Al lugar de su quietud.
- Chilam Balam
Every moon, every year
Every day, every breeze
Goes along, and passes away.
And thus all blood arrives
To its own quiet place.
- Translation by Lucia Berlin |
Human Factor Rules from Code 7700 [1]
Rule #1 — Attitude determines altitude.
Rule #2 — Bloom where you are planted; talent is rare and cannot be ignored.
Rule #3 — A practiced calm will serve you well, even if it is forced, remaining calm will become more natural in the future.
Rule #4 — Deal with it.
Rule #5 — Embrace change.
Rule #6 — Not every battle is worth fighting; sometimes you need to take a few losses along the way.
Rule #7 — Gravity always wins.
Rule #8 — Happiness takes effort.
Rule #9 — If your boss demands loyalty, then give him integrity; but if he demands integrity, then give give him loyalty.
Rule #10 — It's the journey, not the destination, that gives life meaning.
Rule #11 — You don't know what you don't know.
Rule #12 — A man's got to know his limitations. [also Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in Magnum Force]
Rule #13 — There is only so much you can do.
Rule #14 — No plan survives the enemy.
Rule #15 — Optimism takes work and is rewarded.
Rule #16 — Perfect is the enemy of good.
Rule #17 — Quote others, you get a lot more done when you don't worry about the credit.
Rule #18 — Risk is necessary; the turtle only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
Rule #19 — There are greater sins than laziness, but laziness is a sin.
Rule #20 — Trust but verify.
Rule #21 — Sometimes thoughts are best when unspoken.
Rule #22 — The angle of the view determines the view itself.
Rule #23 — When you don't know what to do, do the work in front of you.
Rule #24 — Lead by conspicuous example.
Rule #25 — Don't worry about things you cannot control.
Rule #26 — Learn early, start with zero and add from there. |
Laws of the
House of God
I. Gomers do not die.
II. Gomers go to ground.
III. At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure
is to take your own pulse.
IV. The patient is the one with the disease.
V. Placement comes first.
VI. Any body cavity can
be reached with a #14 needle and a good
strong arm.
VII. Age + Bun = Lasix dose.
VIII. They can always hurt you more.
IX. The only good admission is a dead
admission.
X. If you don't take a temperature, you
can't find a fever.
XI. Show me a Best Medical Student who only triples my
work and I will kiss his feet.
XII. If the radiology resident and the
Best Medical Student both see a lesion on the chest X-ray,
there can be no lesion there.
XIII. A turf to neurology never bounces.
XIV. The delivery of medical care is to
do as much nothing as possible.
- Samuel Shem, from a novel of the same name |
A sedated prepped body lying around unattended for five hours in a corridor near radiology will not be noticed.
-- paraphrased from Paddy Chayefsky in The Hospital |
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
- Epicurus |
Haiku are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
- Rolf Nelson
[Grammar Corrected] |
The girls today in society,
Go for classical poetry,
So to win their hearts one must quote
with ease
Aeschylus and Euripides.
One must know Homer and, believe me, Bo,
Sophocles, also Sappho-ho!
Unless you know Shelley and Keats and
Pope.
Dainty debbies will call you a dope.
But the poet of them all
Who will start ‘em simply ravin’
Is the poet people call
The bard of Stratford-on-Avon.
Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow.
- Cole Porter |
| Zen Sarcasm |
| Short Version Basic Philosophy |
| [1] Human factors rules at code7700. |
| |
| |