B

"Every minute dies a man, / Every minute one is born"; I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world’s population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows: "Every moment dies a man / And one and a sixteenth is born." I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.
- Charles Babbage, in a letter to Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], ’Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
- Charles Babbage

You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it.
- Charles Babbage

If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it.
- Roger Babson

You can’t start worrying about what’s going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what’s happening now.
- Lauren Bacall

If ’publish or perish’ were really true, Leonard Euler would still be alive
- Eric Bach

There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
- Johann Sebastian Bach

Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they’ll call you crazy.
- Richard Bach, "Messiah’s Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"

Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.
- Richard Bach

Humanity is not a gift of nature, it is a spiritual achievement to be earned.
- Richard Bach

Learning is finding out what you already know
- Richard Bach

The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each others life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
- Richard Bach

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626), "Of Beauty"

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626), "Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature"

A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth of philosophy bringeth a man’s mind about to religion.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

A man who studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

A prudent question is one-half wisdom.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but if it light well, it makes virtue shine and vice blush.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches; for they despise them that despair of them; and none are worse when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

History makes men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

I could hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

It is true, that a little Philosophy inclineth Man’s Minde to Atheism; but depth in Philosophy bringeth Men’s Mindes about to Religion.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries, and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder and the magnet [i.e. Mariner’s Needle]. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Libraries are the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Our humanity were a poor thing were it not for the divinity which stirs within us.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Silence is the virtue of fools.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. Argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has equal force though shot by a child.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man or angels come into danger by it.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense, the last was the light of the reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of the spirit.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

There are three parts in truth: first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

To read without reflecting, is like eating without digesting.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

We take cunning for a sinister and crooked wisdom, and certainly there is a great difference between a cunning man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty but in point of ability.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

It is better to sound a person with whom one deals afar off, than to fall upon the point at first.
- Fred Bacon

All our actions take their hues from the complexion of the heart. As landscapes their variety from light.
- W. T. Bacon

Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
- Arthur Baer (1896-1975)

What’s good politics is bad economics; what’s bad politics is good economics; what’s good economics is bad politics; what’s bad economics is good politics. (Or, more compactly, "What’s good politics is bad economics and vice versa, vice versa.)
- Eugene W. Baer

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), "Biographical Studies" 1863

A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

O! love is like the rose, And a month it may not see, Ere it withers where it grows.
- Bailey

Poets are all who love - all who feel great truths - And tell them.
- Bailey

The beautiful are never desolate, But someone always loves them.
- Bailey

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love; The taint of earth, the odor of the skies is in it.
- Bailey

The worst men often give the best advice.
- Bailey

The American Republic and American business are Siamese twins; they came out of the same womb at the same time; they are born in the same principles, and when American business dies, the American republic will die, and when the American Republic dies, American business will die.
- Josiah W. Bailey

Friendship is no plant of hasty growth; Tho’ planted in esteem’s deep fixed soil, The gradual culture of kind intercourse Must bring it to perfection.
- Joanna Baillie

Rocks have been shaken from their solid base, but what shall move a firm and dauntless mind?
- Joanna Baillie

The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat oneself. All sin is easy after that.
- Baily

There is a story about a software contractor who was hired to write code to calculate range tables for the US Navy. They used feet for altitude and statute miles for range. "No! We’re the Navy. Use NAUTICAL miles!" the Navy said. So the contractor changed the code to use nautical miles for the range. And negative fathoms for the altitude.
- Peter Bain

Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they say, I will not vote. Having abstained, they are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black.
- Russel Baker, Ford without Flummery

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories -- those that don’t work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
- Russel Baker

In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one’s beloved.
- Russell Baker

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
- Russell Baker

New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.
- Russell Baker

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
- Russell Baker

Before we meaningfully consider OSF, it needs to get deployed in more than just books.
- Steve Baker, Net Worth column, UNIX Review, Feb 1993, p.17

I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS.
- Robert Bakker, paleontologist

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
- James Baldwin

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was before you came in.
- James Baldwin

Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.
- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

Sleep is an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica.
- J.G. Ballard

IBM is going to have an impossible job doing a great Windows clone without our cooperation--and I’m not cooperating.
- Steve Ballmer

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

My heart is pure as the driven slush.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

The less I behave like Whistler’s mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and - BANG - there you are in someone’s living room.
- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

If at first you do succeed---try to hide your astonishment.
- Harry F. Banks

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
- Sir Frederick G. Banting

A gentleman does things no gentleman should do in a way only a gentleman can.
- Luigi Banzini

Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to exactly the point of most pressure.
- Milt Barber

If you take your boots off, you’ll never get them back on again.
- Milt Barber

The difficulty of finding any given trail marker is directly proportional to the importance of the consequences of failing to find it.
- Milt Barber

The integral of the gravitational potential taken around any loop trail you choose to hike always comes out positive.
- Milt Barber

The local density of mosquitos is inversely proportional to your remaining repellant.
- Milt Barber

The number of stones in your boot is directly proportional to the number of hours you have been on the trail.
- Milt Barber

The remaining distance to your chosen campsite remains constant as twilight approaches.
- Milt Barber

The weight of your pack increases in direct proportion to the amount of food you consume from it. If you run out of food, the pack weight goes on increasing anyway.
- Milt Barber

You have to be as fully prepared for the dull game as you are for the great game, or else you won’t be prepared for the great one.
- Red Barber

Ideally, you should be your own hero, just as I am mine.
- Bargepole

Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.
- Clive Barker, "Jihad"

I’ve always thought that the most extraordinary special effect you could do is to buy a child at the moment of its birth, sit it on a little chair and say, "You’ll have three score years and ten," and take a photograph every minute. "And we’ll watch you and photograph you for ten years after you die, then we’ll run the film." Wouldn’t that be extraordinary? We’d watch this thing get bigger and bigger, and flower to become extraordinary and beautiful, then watch it crumble, decay, and rot.
- Clive Barker

It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one’s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.
- Clive Barker

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.
- Alben W. Barkley (1877-1956), U.S Vice President (1949-1953)

...once can imagine the government’s problem. This is all pretty magical stuff to them. If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch coven, I’d probably seize everything in sight. How would I tell the ordinary household brooms from the getaway vehicles?
- John Perry Barlow

In Cyberspace, the 1st Amendment is a local ordinance.
- John Perry Barlow

I read [.doc files] with ’rm.’ All you lose is the Microsoft-specific font selections, the macro viruses and the luser babblings.
- Gary ’Wolf’ Barnes

This is easy. Windoze is the Mac interface done by people with Crayolas instead of rapidiographs.
- barnhill@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, 13 Feb 94 02:57:52 CST

Every crowd has a silver lining.
- Phineas Taylor Barnum

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
- Phineas Taylor Barnum

The wonders of the ages assembled for your edification, education, and enjoyment- for a price.
- Phineas Taylor Barnum

The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe and that it teaches the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind; words, images and ideas.
- Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy

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

For three hundred years flutists tried to play in tune. Then they gave up and invented vibrato.
- George Barrere

Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads.
- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

I am not young enough to know everything.
- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

I know not, sir whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.
- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
- Sir James Barrie

Because men believe not in Providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing.
- Barrow

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942), dying words

A man must properly pay the fiddler. In my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra had to be subsidized.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

Brides aren’t happy - they are just triumphant.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass and some cracked ice.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

The good die young - because they see it’s no use living if you’ve got to be good.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

You never realize how short a month is until you pay alimony.
- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

It would have been cheaper to mount one of our regular telescopes on a 81 mile high stack of $50 bills.
- Dave Barry on the Hubble Telescope

The U.S. Surgeon General warns that if you make a really ugly face, it could get stuck that way.
- Dave Barry’s 1989 In Review

The other major kind of computer is the ’Apple,’ which I do not recommend, because it is a wuss-o-rama new-age computer that you basically just plug in and use. This means you don’t get to participate in the most entertaining aspect of computer owning, which is trying to get the computer to work.
- Dave Barry, 6 February 1994

And computers are getting smarter all the time: scientists tell us that soon they will be able to talk to us. (By "they" I mean "computers": I doubt scientists will ever be able to talk to us.)
- Dave Barry

Dogs would make totally incompetent criminals. If you could somehow get a group of dogs to understand the concept of the Kennedy assassination, they would all immediately confess to it. Whereas you’ll never see a cat display any kind of guilty behavior, despite the fact that several cats were seen in Dallas on the grassy knoll area, not that I wish to start rumors.
- Dave Barry

It may be meaningless, but at least it’s a gesture.
- Dave Barry

People in the computer industry use the word "user", which to them means "idiot".
- Dave Barry

Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that _you_ must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
- Dave Barry

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
- Dave Barry

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
- Dave Barry

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
- Dave Barry

O you much partial gods! Why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them?
- Ludovick Barry

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
- Lynda Barry

Love: two minds without a single thought.
- Philip Barry

I’m no one’s trophy!!!
- Constance Barr

On a beautiful day like this it’s hard to believe anyone can be unhappy, but we’ll work on it.
- Donald Barr

If you don’t like the way I program stay out of my core dumps.
- Jeff Barr

The more things change, the bigger the diffs.
- Jeff Barr

Women are cursed, and men are the proof.
- Rosanne Barr

The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should serve the state is essentially a Communist notion. In a free society these institutions must be wholly free- which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.
- Alan Barth

Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an *illusion* that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means.
- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we admire him.
- John Barth

Faith is never identical with piety.
- Karl Barth

That’s a problem with life. You can’t do anything about stupid people.
- David Bartlett

A feature is a bug with seniority.
- Dave Bartley

Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly -- it’s probably because two errors are canceling each other out.
- Dave Bartley

Even if it can’t, it might.
- A. J. Barton

If you can give your son only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
- Bruce Barton

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.
- Bruce Barton

Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
- R. S. Barton

Law of Hokey Horsepuckery: The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.
- Wayne R. Bartz

During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
- Bernard M. Baruch

Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
- Bernard M. Baruch

Mankind would be vastly poorer if it had not been for men who were willing to take risks against the longest odds. Even if it could be done, we would be foolish to try to stamp out this willingness in man to buck seemingly hopeless odds. Our problem is how to remain properly venturesome and experimental without making fools of ourselves.
- Bernard M. Baruch

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
- Bernard M. Baruch

The analogy to athletics must be pressed until all recognize that in the exercise of intellect those who lack the muscles, coordination, and will power can claim no place at the training table, let alone on the playing field.
- Jacques Barzun

The simple but difficult arts of paying attention, copying accurately, following an argument, detecting an ambiguity or a false inference, testing guesses by summoning up contrary instances, organizing one’s time and one’s thought for study- all these arts cannot be taught in the air but only through the difficulties of a defined subject; they cannot be taught in one course on one year, but must be acquired gradually in dozens of connections.
- Jacques Barzun

Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.
- Pop Baslim

Zero raised to the nth power remains zero.
- Pop Baslim

If at first you don’t succeed, blame it on the teacher.
- Stacey Bass

Supercomputer: Turns CPU-bound problem into I/O-bound problem.
- Ken Batcher

In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not D.N.A.
- Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Matter

Equation (1.2-9) is a second order, nonlinear, vector, differential equation which has defied solution in its present form. It is here therefore we depart from the realities of nature to make some simplifying assumptions...
- Bate, Mueller & White, 1971, :"Fundamentals of Astrodynamics

Writers have two main problems. One is writer’s block, when the words won’t come at all and the other is logorrhea, when the words come so fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time.
- Cecilia Bartholomew

[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.
- Battaille

If all the world’s economists were laid end to end, we wouldn’t reach a conclusion.
- William Baumol

A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
- Sir Arnold Bax

Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.
- E. R. Beadle

Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose thy neighborhood carefully.
- Louise Beal

You’ll get a fair trial followed by a first class hanging.
- Judge Roy Bean

Warning to Lawyers: Beware of and eschew pompous prolixity.
- Charles A. Beardsley

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
- Charles Austin Beard, historian

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
- James Beard

Natural selection won’t matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious selection. We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we can be. Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves unrecognizably.
- Greg Bear

The race may not always be to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but it’s a good idea to bet that way.
- O. L. Bear

If all the world’s a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
- Paul Beatty

I make myself laugh at everything, in case I should have to weep.
- Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais

Honor’s a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he’s right honorable.
- Beaumont and Fletcher

It show’d discretion, the best part of valor.
- Beaumont and Fletcher

Our natures are like oil; compound us with anything, yet will we strive to swim at the top.
- Beaumont and Fletcher

Math is as creative as music, painting, or sculpture. The high school freshman will revel in it if we let him play with abstractions. But insisting that he pin numbers down is like asking him to catch a butterfly to explain the sheen on its wings - the magical glint of the sun rubs off on his fingers and the fluttering thing in his hands can never lift into the air again to renew his wonder.
- Max Beberman

False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crime.
- Cesare Beccaria, quoted by Thomas Jefferson

The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty, yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King.
- Johann Becher

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
- Peter Bechmann

It’s so fast, it can do an infinite loop in thirty seconds.
- Brian Bechtel of Apple Computer on the Macintosh IIfx

No class of Americans, so far as I know, has ever objected to any amount of governmental meddling if it appeared to benefit that particular class.
- Carl Becker

Social Democracy rests on the assumption that it is desirable to preserve the capitalist system of private enterprise, and that the evils of this system can be sufficiently corrected by the democratic method of procedure.
- Carl Becker

The primary aim of all government regulation of economic life of the community should be, not to supplant the system of private economic enterprise, but to make it work.
- Carl Becker

Three of your friends throw up after eating chicken salad. Do you think "I should find more robust friends" or "we should check that refrigerator"?
- Donald Becker, on vortex-bug, suspecting a network-wide problem

When people have a job to do, particularly a vital but difficult one, they will invariably put it off until the last possible moment, and most of them will put it off even longer.
- Gordon L. Becker

It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.
- Jules Becker

Once a person has been hired, inertia sets in, and the employer would rather settle for the current employee’s incompetence and ideosyncracies than look for a new employee.
- Jules Becker

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
- Beckett

The major sin is the sin of being born.
- Samuel Beckett

He can’t think without his hat.
- Samuel Becket, "Waiting for Godot", act I

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
- Samuel Becket, "Waiting for Godot", act I

Since we’re all here, we must not be all there.
- Bob Mountain Beck

Forget computers; it’s hard enough getting humans to pass the Turing test.
- David Bedno

Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids.
- Tim Bedore

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids, but love and trust are sweet juices.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler than he is by nature.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
- Max Beerbohm

In a paper awaiting publication [Paul Horowitz] and [Carl] Sagan list about 50 odd signals from the Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay I and its twin outside Buenos Aires, Meta Ii. Some have characteristics that rule out their being messages from extraterrestrials. But dozens remain, suspended forever in time like a ringing phone that you picked up a nanosecond too late.
- Sharon Begley

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.
- Brendan Behan

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
- Brendan Behan

The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young woman increases by pyramidical progression when he is already in the company of 1) a date, 2) his wife, 3) a better looking and richer male friend.
- Ronald H. Beifeld

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- Francis Bellamy, 1892

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
- Cardinal Bellarmine 1615, during the trial of Galileo.

Slander meets no regard from noble minds; only the base believe what the base only utter.
- Beller

I’m not an ambulance chaser. I’m usually there before the ambulance.
- Melvin Belli

But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about.
- Hilaire Belloc

A man is only as good as what he loves.
- Saul Bellow

In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
- Saul Bellow

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.
- Eric Temple Bell

Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
- G. Bell

A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

A really good bass is the hardest drunk to find.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn’t the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

As for me, except for the occaisional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

But the chances are that you will get nowhere with your spy scare. You have to have a bigger territory to work in. That’s one of the advantages of being a government instead of just a private liar.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

I can’t seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I’ll be toddling along." It isn’t that I can’t toddle. It’s that I can’t guess I’ll toddle.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Strange faces peering out from the bathroom can be pretty frightening if you are not in good health or spirits.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man’s taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The only cure for a real hangover is death.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.
- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Persons who would be placed outside the pale of society with contempt are not those who would be placed there by another culture.
- Ruth Benedict

Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
- John Benfield

There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
- Gregory Benford, "Timescape"

Canada is a country so square that even the female impersonators are women.
- Richard Benner

Let’s face it...most relationships you have in life don’t work out.
- Alex Bennett

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior imapartiality.
- Arnold Bennett

That’s the problem with tragedies. After the first chapter, you know the dick-ass is gonna die because he’s not perfect!
- Ed Bennett

I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one.
- James Gordon Bennett

As life moves to this electronic frontier, politicians and corporations are starting to exert increasing control over the new digital realm, policing information highways with growing strictness. Before we even realise we’re there, we may find ourselves boxed into a digital ghetto, denied simple rights of access, while corporations and government agencies make out their territory and roam free. So who will oppose the big guys? Who’s going to stand up for our digital civil liberties? Who has the techno-literacy necessary to ask a few pertinent questions about what’s going down in cyberspace? Perhaps the people who have been living there the longest might have a few answers.
- Mark Bennett

I have made mistakes, but have never made the mistake of claiming I never made one.
- James G. Bennet

Blessed is he who has reached the point of no return and knows it, for he shall enjoy living.
- W. C. Benne

A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid.
- Jack Benny (1894-1974)

Liberty is being free from the things we don’t like in order to be slaves to the things we do like.
- Ernest Benn

I believe in instinct, not in reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.
- A. C. Benson

It is difficult for me to comprehend the fact that some people actually do not consider all uses of explosives to be recreational.
- Ragnar Benson

Every law is an infraction of liberty.
- Jeremy Bentham

Lawers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
- Jeremy Bentham

No atheist, as such, can be a true friend, an affectionate relation, or a loyal subject.
- Dr. Bentley

An old puzzle asks how a barometer can be used to measure the height of a building. Answers range from dropping the instrument from the top and measuring the time of its fall to giving it to the building’s superintendent in return for a look at the plans. A modern version of the puzzle asks how a personal computer can balance a checkbook. An elegant solution is to sell the machine and deposit the money.
- Jon Bentley, More Programming Pearls

If a program doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how fast it runs; after all, the null program gives the wrong answer in no time at all.
- Jon Bentley

People who deal with bits should expect to get bitten.
- Jon Bentley

If Jerry Brown is the answer, it must be a very peculiar question.
- Sen Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas

Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature.
- Henry Albert Ben, _The Second Law_

Excuse me while I open Pandora’s box.
- Ed Berard

It took me 15 years to realize that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up by that time, because I was too famous.
- R. Berchly

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
- Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.
- John Berger

I knew I’d been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign that said ’Free firewood" and my first thought was "Who was Firewood and what did he do?’
- John Berger

There is only one sin in this world, and you have definately committed it: It is the Sin of Not Understanding Humor When It Slaps You Upside The Head.
- Pete Berger

There’s no need for flames in response to a comment, no matter how hostile the comment was delivered.
- Peter Glen Berger, 3/19/88, andrew.gripes

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
- Ingmar Bergman

Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought.
- Henri Bergson

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
- Henri Bergson

We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
- Bishop Berkeley

An exception TESTS a rule; it NEVER proves it.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

Check the answer you have worked out once more before you tell it to anybody.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have one answer.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

Never decide to buy anything while listening to the salesman.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it. It probably isn’t right.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

The world is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be.
- Edmund C. Berkeley

Committee: a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.
- Milton Berle

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man’s reason has never learned to separate them.
- Desmond Bernal

Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself.
- John Bernal

Hell is not to love anymore.
- Georges Bernanos

Art is I; science is we.
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

Man is by nature metaphysical and proud. He has gone so far as to think that the idealistic creations of his mind, which correspond to his feelings, also represent reality.
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds.
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.
- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

The tears of penitents are the wine of angels.
- St. Bernard

Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
- Jeff Berner

No man is a hero to his wife’s psychiatrist.
- Eric Berne

We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
- Eric Berne

Survey taker to resident: Do you realize that that choice puts you in the two- percent lunatic fringe?
- Bernhardt

LZW compression takes under five lines of APL. 
The entire description of the world takes only five lines of APL.
- Dan Bernstein and Mike Waters

...to raise a signal means to turn the light on; ... Responding to a signal means turning the light off (and, under System V, hoping the bulb won’t blow when it’s next turned on)...
- Dan Bernstein

A falling body always rolls to the most inaccessible spot.
- Theodore M. Bernstein

The farther away from the entrance of the market (theater, or any other given location) that you have to park, the closer the space vacated by the car that pulls away as you walk up to the door.
- Judith deMille Berson

The mechanistic world view, taking the play of physical particles as ultimate reality, found its expression in a civilization which glorifies physical technology that has led eventually to the catastrophes of our time. Possibly the model of the world as a great organization can help to reinforce the sense of reverence for the living which we have almost lost in the last sanguinary decades of human history.
- Ludwig von Bertalanffy

If we follow the advice of these people, we might as well go back into the cave.
- Hans Bethe

Virtue is its own punishment.
- Aneurin Bevan

... everyone knows that Heavy metal is the most conservative of all the loud rock music. No gym teacher could ever get that many people to dress alike.
- Jello Biafra

Irony is the hygiene of the mind.
- Elizabeth Bibesco

Admiration, n: Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Devil’s Dictionary"

Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Devil’s Dictionary"

To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one’s voice.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Devil’s Dictionary"

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), "The Devil’s Dictionary

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

Calamites are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father- and act which made a deep impression on me at the time.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

I think I think, therefore, I think I am.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

Success is the one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

The covers of this book are too far apart.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

There are four types of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.
- Walter Bilbey

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
- Josh Billings (1818-1885)

Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don’t understand.
- Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
- Josh Billings

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
- Josh Billings

Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
- Josh Billings

A man is a person who will pay two dollars for a one-dollar item he wants. A woman will pay one dollar for a two-dollar item she doesn’t want.
- William Binger

Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion.
- Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)

Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
- Augustine Birrell (1850-1933)

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
- Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898)

Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches.
- Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898)

Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.
- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of putting it into practice.
- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

The Social Sciences are good at accounting for disasters once they have taken place.
- Claude T. Bissell

Den som har droemt Udfaerd og Daad senker ej Sejl uden med Sorg. (He who has dreamed of travel and deeds, does not lower his sail without sorrow.)
- Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology.
- Gerritt A. Blaauw

May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.
- Patrick Blackett

Sour discontent that quarrels with our fate May give fresh smart, but not the old abate; The uneasy passion’s disingenuous wit, The ill reveals but hides the benefit.
- Sir Richard Blackmore

The Bible doesn’t forbid suicide. It’s Catholic directive, intended to slow down their loss of martyrs.
- Ellen Blackstone

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space
- Diana Black

Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. It is just to day, as Dean Swift has done, that a man is too proud to be vain.
- Blair

The weather for catching fish is that weather, and no other, in which fish are caught.
- W. H. Blake

O why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like rest of my race?
- William Blake (1757-1827), 1803

Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire
- William Blake (1757-1827)

One law for the lion and the ox is oppression.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

Happiness is in direct proportion to the distance from the home office. Contradictory Corollary: The diner who is furthest from the kitchen is a nervous eater.
- Al Blanchard

If you want your name spelled wrong, die.
- Al Blanchard

You will need three umbrellas: one to leave at the office, one to leave at home home, and one to leave on the train.
- James L. Blankenship

The minute you sign a client is the minute you start to lose him.
- James M. Blankenship

It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered recently is four times bigger then the previous record.
- John Blasik

The purpose of the present course is the deepening and development of difficulties underlying contemporary theory.
- A. A. Blasov

To function efficiently, any group of people or employees must have faith in their leader.
- Capt. Bligh (HMRN, Ret)

Behind almost every woman you ever heard of stands a man who let her down.
- Naomi Bliven

Indignation is the soul’s defense against the wound of doubt about its own; it reorders the cosmos to support the justice of its cause. It justifies putting Socrates to death. Recognizing indignation for what it is constitutes knowledge of the soul, and is thus an experience more philosophic than the study of mathematics.
- Allan Bloom

There will be more white belts there than you can shake a stick at ... safely.
- Marc "Red" Bloom

Certain things shouldn’t be moved.
- Murray Teigh Bloom

Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
- Blore’s Razor

Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.
- Roy Blount, Jr.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic.
- Roy Blount, Jr.

The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."
- Roy Blount, Jr.

The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we’ll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
- Robert Bly

Conservatives want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. Liberals want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in, and wiping your nose. Libertarians want to treat you as an adult.
- David Boaz

Think that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no noble action done.
- Jacob Bobart

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962) to a young physicist

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

No, no, you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

The wisest man is generally he who thinks himself the least so.
- Boileau

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
- Derek Bok, president of Harvard

Anything a human being does to a LaRouche follower is justifiable on the grounds of self-defense.
- Kevin Bold

The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to remount first principles, and to take nobody’s word about them.
- Bolingbroke

Under current practices, both expenditures and revenues rise to meet each other, no matter which one may be in excess.
- Joe Bolton

All men can be lead to believe the lie they want to believe.
- Italo Bombolini

All men can be reached by flattery, even God can (what, after all, is prayer?).
- Italo Bombolini

Anyone can be great with money. With money, greatness is not a talent but an obligation. The trick is to be great without money.
- Italo Bombolini

In time of trouble, men of talent are called for, but in times of ease the rich and those with powerful relatives are desired.
- Italo Bombolini

Ingratitude is the crack in the sewer that turns the sweet waters of life into a running shit pot.
- Italo Bombolini

Never grow old where you once have been great.
- Italo Bombolini

The duty of the people is to tend to their affairs. The duty of government is to help them do it. This is the pasta of politics. The inspired leader, the true prince, no matter how great, can only be sauce upon the pasta.
- Italo Bombolini

The wise prince must foment some emnity so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness.
- Italo Bombolini

There is nothing more difficult to carry out and more doubtful of success than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who prosper by the old order.
- Italo Bombolini

To live in a place where you don’t belong is to live in hell.
- Italo Bombolini

You can fool the people about many things, but only a fool would be foolish enough to fool the people about money.
- Italo Bombolini

That’s the trouble with this country. The whole place is filled with penniless patriots.
- Rosa Bombolini

The conventional wisdom is that power is an aphrodisiac. In truth, it’s exhausting.
- Dom Bonafede

What a beautiful fix we are in now; peace has been declared.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) after the Treaty of Amiens, 1802

A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Ability is of little account without opportunity.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Even in war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

History is a set of lies agreed upon.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

The secret to winning the support of large groups of people is positive thinking.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

The aim of this article has been to show that our most successful theories in physics are those that explicitly leave room for the unknown, while confining this room sufficiently to make the theory empirically disprovable. It does not matter whether this room is created by allowing for arbitrary forces as Newtonian dynamics does, or by allowing for arbitrary equations of state for matter, as General Relativity does, or for arbitrary motions of charges and dipoles, as Maxwell’s electrodynamics does. To exclude the unknown wholly as a "unified field theory" or a "world equation" purports to do is pointless and of no scientific significance.
- Sir Hermann Bondi

Stupidity is evil waiting to happen.
- Clay Bond

Money is a good servant, but a dangerous master.
- Bonhours

...one of the things that tools can do is to help bad designers create ghastly designs much more quickly than they ever could in the past.
- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design"

The mind, in fact, is trained to be able to deal with routine: the routine of working in an office, the routine of working in a factory, the routine even of teaching, the routine of going to school. The mind is routinized. And under those circumstances it is understandable that the most uncreative and frequently destructive aspects of the human mind are brought out.
- Murray Bookchin

Until we become the architects of a society that is truly free and ecological, it will always seem that when the human brain is not adaptive, it is more often destructive than creative.
- Murray Bookchin

Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow - it empties today of strength.
- Corrie ten Boom

A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

God is the Celebrity-Author of the World’s Best-Seller. We have made God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there is an exception to every rule. If we accept "For every rule there is an exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.
- Bill Boquist

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
- William H. Borah

If you hadn’t dropped out of school before you were qualified to TAKE software engineering, you would undoubtedly have learned that the standard software engineering curriculum heavily recommends comments, formal design methodology, and all sorts of other totally useless bullshit.
- Nathaniel Borenstein to Zalman Stern

Andrew is so incredibly reliable that almost any printing command will work, as long as it is long and complex enough...
- Nathaniel Borenstein

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment- the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
- Jorge Luis Borges

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
- Jorge Luis Borges

My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
- Jorge Luis Borges

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
- Victor Borge

Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit everyone once a year.
- Victor Borge

What is the difference between a violin and a viola? The difference is that a viola burns longer.
- Victor Borge

When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance.
- Victor Borge

I would imagine even a trained MSCE-monkey can run a virus scan...OW! What the hell? Ack! Help! Idealism is biting me on the ass! Get it off! Get it off!
- Andrew Boring, in alt.sysadmin.revocery

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.
- Max Born

For the man who has everything... Penicillin.
- F. Borquin

Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants.
- Boston

In any household, junk accumulates to fill the space available for its storage.
- Bruce O. Boston

For every proverb that confidently asserts its little bit of wisdom, there is usually an equal and opposite proverb that contradicts it.
- Richard Boston

There is no substitute for excellence-not even success.
- Thomas Boswell

The life of human beings is very short. We are all going to die. Why should we cling so much to power?
- Algerian President Muhammad Boudiaf, seconds before being assassinated. Newsweek July 13, 1992

If a generalist delights to find a law he is ecstatic when he finds a law about laws. If laws in his eyes are good, laws about laws are delicious and are most praiseworthy objects of search.
- Boulding

Main Article of General Systems Faith: the order of the empirical world itself has an order which might be called order of the second degree.
- Boulding

If the converse of a statement is absurd, the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said.
- Arthur H. Boultbee

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing.
- Randolph S. Bourne

The next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to quote another’s wit.
- Christian Nestell Bovee

"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold" - Hunter S. Tolkien, "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur"
- Iain Bowen (alaric@alaric.org.uk) in rec.arts.sf.written

You can neither win nor lose if you don’t run the race
- Bowie

Diplomacy gets you out of what tact would have KEPT you out of.
- Brian Bowling

Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
- Dr. Karl Bowman (1888-1973)

There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.
- L. M. Boyd

How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?
- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD’s First Annual Salary Survey

An original idea can never emerge from a committee in the original.
- Charles P. Boyle

Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations.
- Charles P. Boyle

Information travels more surely to those with a lesser need to know.
- Charles P. Boyle

On successive charts of the same organization, the number of boxes will never decrease.
- Charles P. Boyle

Performance is directly affected by the perversity of inanimate objects.
- Charles P. Boyle

Success can be insured only by devising a defense against the contingency plan.
- Charles P. Boyle

Talent in staff work or sales will recurringly be interpreted as managerial ability.
- Charles P. Boyle

The "think positive" leader tends to listen to his subordinates’ premonitions only during the postmortems.
- Charles P. Boyle

The crucial memorandum will be snared in the out-basket by the paper clip of the overlaying correspondence and go to file.
- Charles P. Boyle

The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs.
- Charles P. Boyle

The lagging activity in a project will invariably be found in the area where the highest overtime rates lie waiting.
- Charles P. Boyle

The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the wrong denomination.
- Charles P. Boyle

When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform perfectly.
- Charles P. Boyle

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"

I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.
- Lord Brabazon

He grounds the warship he walks on.
- John Bracken on Captain Barney Kelly who ran the USS Enterprise into the mud of San Francisco Bay in May 1983

Why does a small tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and s substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
- Peg Bracken

Never despise fashion. It’s what we have instead of God.
- Malcolm Bradbury

If Blake said that, said Father Brian, he never lived in Dublin.
- R. Bradbury, The Machineries of Joy

I was one of Them: the Strange Ones. The Funny People. The Odd Tribes of autograph collectors and photographers. The Ones who waited through long days and nights, who used other people’s dreams for their lives.
- Ray Bradbury

The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history.
- Ray Bradbury

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
- Ray Bradbury

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.
- Bradley’s Bromide

Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one.
- Sen. Bill Bradley

The splendor of an editor’s speech and the splendor of his newspaper are inversely related to the distance between the city in which he makes his speech and the city in which he publishes his paper.
- Ben Bragdikian

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
- Sir William Bragg

God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
- William Bragg

One learns to itch where one can scratch.
- Ernest Bramah

The spirit of public service will rise, and the bureaucracy will multiply itself much faster, in time of grave national concern.
- Taylor Branch

Arguments seem futile to me, for behind every argument I have ever heard lies the astounding ignorance of someone.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The real fight today is against inhuman, relentless exercise of capitalistic power. The present struggle in which we are engaged is for social and industrial justice.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Documentation is like sex; when it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it’s better than nothing
- Dick Brandon

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
- Leonard Brandwein

Whenever I hear the word "share" I would reach for a gun if I had one. "Share" is frequently followed by the word "feelings," and I have enough of my own thank you; please do us both a favor and repress yours.
- Stewart Brand

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road....
- Stuart Brand, "The Media Lab"

There’s no fool like an old fool --- you can’t beat experience.
- Jacob Braude

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

Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) on America

Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

Grub first, then ethics.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

I don’t trust him. We’re friends.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

On thinking about Hell, I gather My brother Shelley found it was a place Much like the city of London. I Who live in Los Angeles and not in London Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be Still more like Los Angeles.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

There are times when you have to choose between being a human and having good taste.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

War is like love; it always finds a way.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

Why be a man when you can be a success?
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

The greatest danger to human beings is their consciousness of the trivialities of their aims.
- Gerald Brennen

At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
- Richard H. Brien

SURE-FIRE SINGLES AD: Famous Writer needs woman to organize his life and spend his money. Loves to turn off Sunday football and go to the Botanical Gardens with that special someone. Will obtain plastic surgery if necessary.
- Joe Bob Briggs

People don’t change; they only become more so.
- John Bright-Holmes

All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power
- Ashleigh Brilliant

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

I’m perfectly willing to be judged. But only by God and history.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

If you can’t learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

It’s good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Maybe I’m lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Please don’t ask me what the score is, I’m not even sure what the game is.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Please don’t lie to me, unless you’re absolutely sure I’ll never find out the truth.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Sometimes I need what only you can provide - Your absence.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story .
- Ashleigh Brilliant

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!
- Ashleigh Brilliant

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

The modern definition of ’racist’ is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.
- Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)

It would be difficult to hide trapdoors in anything when the source code is freely available. For that matter, if someone -did- hide a trapdoor, making the source code available would mark the perpetrator as one of those people who is too stupid to pour sand out of a boot with illustrated directions on the bottom of the heel.
- Steve Brinich (referring to PGP)

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
- David Brinkley

It’s said that ’power corrupts’, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
- David Brin, "The Postman"

The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
- William J. Broad

It’s immature and silly, but then again -- so is high school.
- Matthew Broderick in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off"

Anybody that wants the presidency so much he’ll spend two years organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
- David Broder

Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
- David Broder

An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched.
- Brodrig

The eyes of the emperor are everywhere.
- Brodrig

The first time, it’s a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it’s a well-established technique!
- Mike Broido, Intermetrics

You say it can’t be won The way the game is run; But if you choose to stay You wind up playin’ anyway.
- Jackson Browne

By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat,they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.
- Jacob Bronowski

Men are machines, with all their boasted freedom, Their movements turn on some favorite passion; Let art but find the foible out, We touch the spring and wind them at our pleasure.
- Brooke

What’s all the gaudy glitter of a crown? What but the glaring meteor of ambition, that leads the wretch benighted in his errors, points to the gulf and shines upon destruction?
- Brooke

Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
- Bellamy Brooks

The bull wears himself out on the cape and never sees the sword.
- Dr. Randall Brooks

Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices -- wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr, "The Mythical Man-Month"

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug."
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month"

The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month"

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month"

The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time to come. One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man’s handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man-Month"

As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear, bearing hot new versions of their pieces- faster, smaller, more complete, or computatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and efficient test cases will usually be available.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price gain in 30 years.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build: They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing, and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states than computers do.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two similar parts into a subroutine- open or closed. In this respect, software systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where repeated elements abound.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

The so-called desktop metaphor of today’s workstations is instead an airplane-seat metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference- one can see only a very few things at once.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

When fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.
- Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
- Mel Brooks

I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals.
- Brigid Brophy

Whenever people say "we mustn’t be sentimental", you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic", they mean they are going to make money out of it.
- Brigid Brophy

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
- Baron Henry Peter Brougham

Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage, a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
- Lord Brougham

I see no wisdom in saving up indignation for a rainy day.
- Heywood Broun

Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.
- Heywood Broun

Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.
- Charles Brower

Never trust a man who is Dr. Jekyll to those above him and Mr. Hyde to those below him.
- Charles Brower

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.
- Charlie Brower

We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
- David Brower

When vultures watching your civilization begin dropping dead, it is time to pause and wonder.
- David Brower

A liberal is a man who leaves the room when the fight begins.
- Heywood Broun

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable.
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

Since when was genius found respectable?
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich.
- Mrs. Browning

Eternity stands always fronting God; a stern colossal image with blind eyes, and dim lips, that murmur evermore, "God, God, God!"
- Mrs. Browning

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp--or what’s a heaven for?
- Robert Browning

The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you’re born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it’s over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end.
- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture

The Baptists’ basic theology is that if you hold someone under water long enough, he’ll come around to your way of thinking. It’s a ritual known as ’Bobbing for Baptists.’
- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture

There are a billion people in China. It’s not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you’re a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.
- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture

A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.
- A. Whitney Brown

I’m against any law that I wouldn’t break if I could get away with it.
- A. Whitney Brown

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.
- A. Whitney Brown

Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
- Andrew Brown

Nature here was so lavish of her store, That she bestow’d until she had no more.
- Brown

Isn’t this precisely why people have sternums? A big solid bone in the middle of their chests that you can staple stuff to?
- Dave Brown

Garage mechanic to customer: There’s nothing mechanically wrong with your car, sir- it’s just an underachiever.
- David Brown

Old wives don’t die if they’re getting alimony
- David Brown

As with liberty, the price of leanness is eternal vigilance.
- Gene Brown

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off.
- Jack Brown

I question whether we can afford to teach mother macrame when Johnny still can’t read.
- Jerry Brown, Governor of California

I reject get-it-done, make-it-happen thinking. I want to slow things down so I understand them better.
- Jerry Brown, Governor of California

Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.
- Jerry Brown, Governor of California

At least when I was govenor, cocaine was expensive.
- Jerry Brown

He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
- John Mason Brown, drama critic

Right now I’m a freshman in my fourth year at U.C.L.A., but my goal is to become a veternarian, ’cause I love children.
- Julie Brown

After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, Maybe life isn’t for everyone.
- Larry Brown

I don’t understand why you make such a big deal out of everything... haven’t you learned; if it’s not happenning to me it’s not important?
- Murphy Brown

Most human problems can be solved by an appropriate charge of high explosive.
- Reb Brown as Blaster in "Uncommon Valor"

If the world were a logical place, men would ride sidesaddle.
- Rita Mae Brown

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
- Rita Mae Brown

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
- Rita Mae Brown

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
- Sam Brown, The Washington Post, January 26, 1977

Our customer’s paperwork is profit. Our own paperwork is loss.
- Tony Brown, Control Data Corp.

It is amusing for someone accustomed to the traffic in New York to hear residents of places like Houston and Atlanta complain about congestion on the highways. Imagine, in rush hour they have to slow down to 35 miles an hour!
- Barry Bruce-Briggs

Because I’m Jewish, a lot of people ask why I killed Christ. What can I say? It was one of those parties that got out of hand. I killed him because he wouldn’t become a doctor.
- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

Communism is like one big phone company.
- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

There is no alcohol in the Band room. But if there were, it would be in that closet there, $4 all you can drink.
- Matt Bruce, Harvard Band

I am getting convinced that OSF has decided to do a mercy killing of Motif.
- Martin Brunecky

In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared.
- Jerome S. Bruner

The zoo is not an exhibition I view with much enjoyment, when I notice beasts in a position To learn the weaknesses of men.
- John Brunner

A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were.
- Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgement to be silent.
- Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
- Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

The summer day has clos’d- the sun is set; Well have they done their office, those bright hours, The latest of whose train goes swiftly out In the red west.
- Bryant

Destiny...is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

Few young men of high gifts and fine tastes look forward to entering public life, for the probability of disappointments and vexations of a life in Congress so far outweigh its attractions that nothing but exceptional ambition or a strong sense of public duty suffices to draw such men into it. Law, education, literature, the higher walks of commerce, finance, or railway work offer a better prospect of enjoyment or distinction.
- Lord James Bryce

Put yourself in Hamlet’s shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and drowned herself. What would you do? 
Go back for a masters?
- Art Buchwald and a student

As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.
- Art Buchwald

Love is the salt of life; a higher taste It gives to pleasure, and then makes it last.
- Buckingham

Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
- William F. Buckley, Jr., "The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.
- William F. Buckley, Jr.

I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
- William F. Buckley, Jr.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
- William F. Buckley

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word ’fair’ in connection with income tax policies.
- William F. Buckley

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
- Fred Bucy, TI, Inc.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: (1) not going all the way; and (2) not starting.
- Buddha

Through zeal, knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal, knowledge is lost; let a man who knows the double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.
- Buddha

When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.
- Buddha

Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.
- Frederick Buechner

I’m growing older, but not up.
- Jimmy Buffett

To write well is at once to think well, to feel rightly, and to render properly! It is to have, at the same time, mind, soul, taste.
- Buffon

Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.
- Charles Bukowski

Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies
- Bill Bulko

In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail.
- Bulwer

Love, which proclaims thee human bids thee know a truth more lofty in thy lowliest hour than shallow glory taught to human power, "What’s human is immortal!"
- Bulwer

My lips pressed themselves involuntarily to hers- a long, long kiss, burning intense-concentrating emotion, heart, soul, all the rays of life’s light... into a single focus.
- Bulwer

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
- Bulwer

Of all the agonies of life, that which is most poignant and harrowing- that which for the most time annihilates reason and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart- is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love.
- Bulwer

The moment a woman marries, some terrible revolution happens in her system; all her good qualities vanish, presto, like eggs out of a conjurers box. ’Tis true that they appear on the other side of the box, but for the husband, they are gone forever.
- Bulwer

The veil which covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand of mercy.
- Bulwer

There is not so agonizing a feeling in the whole catalogue of human suffering, as the first conviction that the heart of the being whom we most tenderly love is estranged from us.
- Bulwer

No Negro American can be free until the lowliest Negro in Mississippi is no longer disadvantaged because of his race.
- Ralph Bunche

Facts and truth are often cousins, not brothers.
- Edward Bunker

Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.
- Luis Bunuel

Here’s to our wives and sweethearts - may they never meet.
- John Bunny (1866-1939)

First must give place to last, because last must have his time to come; but last gives place to nothing, for there is not another to succeed.
- Bunyan

Religion is the best armor that a man can have, but it is the worst cloak.
- Bunyan

My only aversion to vice, is the price.
- Victor Buono

Top executives cannot afford to be isolated from the people below, who are in better touch with what is going on, and cannot afford to set unrealistic goals.
- Charles Burck

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
- Edmund Burke

Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and, therefore, they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, the Heloetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear that generates true courage.
- Edmund Burke

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves; and He loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.
- Edmund Burke

Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body. On the due digestion of facts depends the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable in the commerce of life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts.
- Edmund Burke

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- Edmund Burke

Let us suffer any person to tell us his story morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master.
- Edmund Burke

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time".
- Edmund Burke

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
- Edmund Burke

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.
- Edmund Burke

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded: and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
- Edmund Burke

The march of the human mind is slow.
- Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of Evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
- Edmund Burke

There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
- Edmund Burke

Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are for the greater part ignorant of both the character they leave and of the character they assume.
- Edmund Burke

We have a degree of delight in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
- Edmund Burke

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- Edmund Burke

By gnawing through a dike even a rat may drown a nation.
- Edward Burke

Courtly love-poetry may first have been written during long periods of abstinence on the Crusades, but it would not have flourished in the cold of northern Europe without some help from the chimney.
- James Burke

"Give us the man," shout the multitude, "who will step forward and take the responsibility." He is instantly the idol, the lord, and the king among men. He, then, who would command among his fellows, must excel them more in energy or will than in power of intellect.
- Burnap

Decision of character is one of the most important of human qualities, philosophically considered. Speculation, knowledge, is not the chief end of man; it is action.
- Burnap

It warms me, it charms me, To mention but her name; It heats me, it beats me, And set me a’ on flame.
- Burns

Some have meat that canna eat, And some would eat that want it; But we have meat, and we can eat, So let the Lord be thankit.
- Burns

This will be the greatest thing for labor relations since the Cat o’ Nine Tails!!!
- Charles Montgomery Burns

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
- George Burns

I don’t worry about getting old. I’m old already. Only young people worry about getting old. When I was 65 I had cupid’s eczema. I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides, I can’t die now - I’m booked.
- George Burns

If you live to the age of a hundred, you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred.
- George Burns

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
- George Burns

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.
- Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Burn’s Hog Weighing Method: 1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. 2) Put the hog on one end of the plank. 3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. 4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
- Robert Burns

Eat as much as you like - just don’t swallow it.
- Steve Burns

The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird, watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes, chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation! The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive.
- John Burroughs

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.
- John Burroughs

A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what’s going on.
- William Burroughs

Language is a virus from outer space.
- William S. Burroughs

No cord or cable can draw so forcible, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread.
- Burton

The passions and desires, like the two twists of a rope, mutually mix one with the other, and twine inextricably round the heart; producing good if moderately indulged; but certain destruction, if suffered to become inordinate.
- Burton

I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
- Richard Burton

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
- Sir Richard F. Burton

The only way to deal with exploiters is to terrorize the bastards.
- The late Congressmember Phillip Burton

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that, they just about throw up.
- Barbara Bush

I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don’t always agree with them.
- George Bush

I’ve told you I don’t live and die by the polls. Thus, I will refrain from pointing out that we’re not doing too bad in those polls.
- President Bush, in the New Republic

Get this (economic plan) passed. Later on, we can all debate it.
- President George Bush, to New Hampshire legislators

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One mihgt as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
- Vannevar Bush

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.
- Butler

And though all cry down self, none means his ownself in a literal sense.
- Butler

Authority intoxicates, And makes mere sots of magistrates. The fumes of it invade the brain, And make men giddy, proud and vain; By this the fool commands the wise The noble with the base complies. The sot assumes the rule of wit, And cowards make the base submit.
- Butler

I’ve heard old cunning stagers Say fools for arguments use wagers.
- Butler

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
- Nicholas Murray Butler

A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902) said in 1885

’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virue.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Life is one long process of getting tired.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

The history of art is the history of revivals.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

We think as we do, mainly because other people think so.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.
- Sir William F. Butler

In response to "A little knowledge is dangerous." comes... If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much to be out of danger?
- T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
- James F. Byrnes

Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach flunked geography.
- Robert Byrne

Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)
- Robert Byrne

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
- Robert Byrne

In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.
- Robert Byrne

Love will find a lay.
- Robert Byrne

Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one.
- Robert Byrne

There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
- Robert Byrne

Life’s too short for chess.
- H. J. Byron _Our Boys_

’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print; A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Dreading the climax of all human ills, The inflammation of his weekly bills.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

I loathe that low vice curiosity.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Let none think to fly the danger For soon or late love is his own avenger.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Love will find its way Through paths where wolves would fear to prey, And if it dares enough ’twere hard If passion met not some reward.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Men are the sport of circumstances, when the circumstances seem the sport of men.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which, being finished, here the story ends; ’Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The heart will break, yet brokenly live on.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, And feel for what their duty bids them do.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The vile are only vain; the great are proud.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

There was a general whisper, toss, and wriggle, But etiquette forbade them all to giggle.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world, all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each lov’d one blotted from life’s page, and be alone on earth as I am now.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

What men call gallantry and gods adultery Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Who loves, raves- ’tis youth’s phrenzy; but the cure is bitterer still.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

With just enough of learning to misquote.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Page generated 2018-11-09 06:29:37 EST