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We’re continuing down the alphabet, letter by letter. This time: C.

• “It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.” — Charles Darwin
• “There are books of which the backs and coves are by far the bast parts.” — Charles Dickens
• “There is wisdom of the head and there is wisdom of the heart.” — Charles Dickens
• “There is nothing better than a friend, unless there is a friend with chocolate.” — Charles Dickens
• “Once you become predictable, no one’s interested anymore.” — Chet Atkins
• “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” — Cicero
• “The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.” — Cicero
• “Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius
• “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.” — Confucius

I’m trying to pick some of the best I find from the Brilliant Quotes application. Some of them are quite good, but none are ha-ha-funny, and that’s what always made the one-liners collection worth reading through. I need to spice things up a little again with other types of one-liners, not just the ones that will guide you through life with lowered eyebrows.

Here are some famous quotes by people you’ve probably heard of, among them Bruce Lee, surprisingly enough. Looks like the guy was good at a lot more than kicking.

Benjamin Franklin

• Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
• Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Another version of this is “Early to rise, and early to bed, makes a man healthy but socially dead”, which is supposedly a quote from the Animaniacs series.

• He that can have patience can have what he will.
• I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

A very similar quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, is credited to Thomas Alva Edison. Franklin died almost 60 years before Edison was born, so I’m going to go ahead and guess that Franklin coined this one before Edison.

• In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.
• Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
• There was never a bad peace or a good war.

Continue reading "Behemoths." →

Anniken is watching Twilight on the box and I decided not to. Instead I downloaded the Brilliant Quotes & Quotations application and read through all the authors under A. Here are a few I decided to add to the one-liners collection. Enjoy.

• “As our case is new, we must think anew.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Abraham Lincoln
• “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
• “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.” — Albert Einstein
• “I know not with what weapons World War II will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” — Albert Einstein
• “Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.” — Albert Einstein
• “Peace cannot be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding.” — Albert Einstein
• “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin
• “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.” — Aristotle
• “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” — Ayn Rand

Over the last couple of months I’ve silently added new one-liners without letting you know. What a dick! Every now and then I also get e-mails with new suggestions for one-liners, but most of them are, how should I put this… not that good. But a couple of days ago, I got a long list of great ones from one Simon Elms. Here are the ones I added to the one-liners collection:

• Linux is only free if your time is worthless.
• “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” – James Branch Cabell
• “Life is a sexually transmitted disease” – R. D. Laing
• If you take something away from users, they’ll sneak it in the back way.
• “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” – Blaise Pascal
• “Patience has its limits – take it too far and its cowardice.” – George Jackson
• “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso
• Old ideas got that way because they proved useful.
• It always takes longer and costs more to fix it later.
• Faster hardware doesn’t solve business problems – unless the business problem is slow hardware.
• Systems aren’t made from metaphors, paradigms and methodologies. They’re made from code, wires and hardware.
• “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
• “Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.” – Kin Hubbard
• “Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live” – Damian Conway
• “The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.” – Bill Gates
• “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.” – Emo Philips
• “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain
• It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
• “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist invents the parachute.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “I can resist everything except temptation.” – Oscar Wilde
• “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill
• “It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.” – Winston Churchill
• “Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” – Richard Feynman
• “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” – Groucho Marx
• “I intend to live forever, or die trying.” – Groucho Marx
• “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen
• “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” – Albert Einstein
• “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein
• “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein
• “You may delay, but Time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” – Isaac Asimov
• “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny …’” – Isaac Asimov
• “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” – Isaac Asimov
• “There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.” – Jeremy S. Anderson
• “Look to the future, because that is where you’ll spend the rest of your life.” – George Burns
• Resistance isn’t futile, it’s voltage divided by amperage.
• “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” – Arthur C. Clarke
• Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.