The main difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he’s lying.
- Peter da Silva posting on comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself.
- Peter da Silva
It’s not hard, it’s just asking for a visit by the fuckup fairy.
- Peter da Silva
There’s more enlightenment in "Software Tools". Not the tools themselves, but the understanding of the path to them. Knuth teaches you what rocks and sand are. Kernighan teach you how to build a garden.
- Peter da Silva
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The larger the project or job, the less time there is to do it.
- George A. Daher
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
- Edward Dahlberg
I do not take drugs. I am drugs.
- Salvador Dali
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
- Salvador Dali
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, then quit and get tanked.
- Steve Dallas
And science, we should insist, better than any other discipline, can hold up to its students and followers an ideal of patient devotion to the search for objective truth, with vision unclouded by personal or political motive.
- Sir Henry Hallett Dal
There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the possible exception of the sword.
- Benjamin Dana
When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.
- Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897)
Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
- Dandemis
Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
- Frank Dane
I was five years old before I realized there was no such thing as ALPO baby food.
- Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004)
Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing happened, so I said to her, ’What’s the matter, you can’t think of anybody either?
- Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004)
If a train station is where the train stops, what’s a work station?
- Roger B. Dannenberg
The Green Party is like a watermelon -- green on the outside and red on the inside.
- Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, R-Fullerton
My aim is the re-establishment of the worship of men.
- Gabriel D’Annunzio
It may be that what we call modern is nothing but what is not worthy of remaining to become old.
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate. (Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.)
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy.)
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a Communist.
- Alvin Dark, former baseball coach
I have no idea what White House statement was was issued, but I stand by it 100 percent.
- Richard Darman
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I just hate it.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the last half by our children.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another. Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every molt is a step gained.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882), "The Origin of the Species"
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
It has been a bitter moritification for me to digest the conclusion that the ’race is for the strong’ and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and will always be a wild animal.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
There’s the story at CMU of a jock who pestered someone in the terminal room because he couldn’t comprehend something. "Yeah, here’s your problem -- you’ve got this big file here called *.* that’s screwing you up" Need I say more?
- Al Datri
Anger is blood, pour’d and perplexed into a froth.
- Davenan
Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
- Davenant
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.
- Guy Davenport
Privately owned radio has often been successful in its own terms: profitability, stability, unflagging mediocrity.
- Keith Davey
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward
- Bill Davidsen
VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use UNIX.
- Bill Davidsen
Yes, in my youth I wrote COBOL. But I didn’t compile.
- Bill Davidsen
Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves.
- James Dale Davidson
The dreamers are the ones who conceive of what could happen and the scientists are the ones who make it happen. The best of humanity are those who combine both traits.
- Peter David, "Vendetta"
It is no longer my moral duty as a human being to achieve an integrated and unitary set of explanations for my thoughts and feelings.
- Bronwyn Davies
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines-- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master’s call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
- Robertson Davies, "Tempest-Tost"
"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
- Robertson Davies
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
- Robertson Davies
There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a ’hottest part’ implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.
- Richard Davisson
Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.
- Evan Davis
In business, price increases as service declines.
- James L. Davis
On soap operas all whites are in personal touch with (a) a doctor and (b) a lawyer.
- James L. Davis
The further an individual is from the poorhouse, the more expert one becomes on the ghetto.
- James L. Davis
Writers desire to be paid, authors desire recognition.
- James L. Davis
As part of it’s ’Astro’ program LAPD helicopters maintain an average nineteen-hours-per-day vigil over ’high crime areas’, tactically coordinated to patrol car forces, and exceeding even the British Army’s aerial surveillance of Belfast.
- Mike Davis "City of Quartz
Let me play with it first and I’ll tell you what it is later.
- Miles Davis
Deep is a word like theory or semantic - it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It’s one thing to be able to say I’ve got a theory, quite another to say I’ve got a semantic theory, but, ah, those who can claim I’ve got a deep semantic theory, they are truly blessed.
- Randy Davis
Pills to be taken in twos always come out of the bottle in threes.
- Robert Davis
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
- Charles G. Dawes
’Tis not the fairest form that holds
The mildest, purest soul within;
’Tis not the richest plant that holds
The sweetest fragrance in.
- Dawes
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
- Richard Dawkins
If you don’t go to other men’s funerals they won’t go to yours.
- Clarence Day
If your parents didn’t have any children, the odds are that you won’t have any.
- Clarence Day
We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
- James E. Day, Postmaster General
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
- John Dewey
I’ve got a Gandalf 212 modem. It works at both baud rates; 1200 *and* 300, and senses the correct rate by testing the level of a front-panel toggle switch.
- Anthony de Boer
It may of course be possible that risks-awareness and extreme care are developed in the course of dancing with the fuckup fairy in the pale moonlight.
- Anthony de Boer
Legacy (adj): an uncomplimentary computer-industry epithet that means ’it works’.
- Anthony de Boer
The family is a court of justice which never shuts down for night or day.
- Malcolm De Chazal
How can one conceive of a one party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese.
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
How do you govern a country which has 246 different kinds of cheese?
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
- Remy de Gourmant
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
- Jules de Gaultier
Numbers and lines have many charms, unseen by vulgar eyes, and only discovered to the unwearied and respectful sons of Art. In features the serpentine line (who starts not at the name) produces beauty and love; and in numbers, high powers, and humble roots, give soft delight.
- E. de Joncourt
We see the opening of an era: it is an era of seeking beyond the confines of our atmosphere; may it be also an era of awakening to the countries of earth.
- Bertrand de Jouvenel
Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.
- Jean de la Fontaine
Rien n’est si dangereux qu’un ignorant ami; Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi. (Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; better a wise enemy)
- Jean de la Fontaine
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
- Francois de la Rochefoucauld
ULTRIX uses the Berkeley Fast File System and the Very Slow Disk I/O.
- Philip de Louraille@lhds1.chevron.com
I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers on logic strongly object to all symbols. . . I should advise the reader not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters; secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols.
- Augustus de Morgan
When the revolution comes, we’ll need a longer wall.
- Tom De Mulder
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts - 1827
It is well to write love letters. There are certain things for which it is not easy to ask your mistress face to face, like money for instance.
- Henri de Regnier
A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking (meant) for others!
- Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade, Marquis de Sade
You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of, is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness --- it means more to me than my life itself.
- Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade, Marquis de Sade
Fortune is always on the side of the biggest battalions.
- Marquise de Sevigne
The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.
- Madame de Stael
Wit lies in the likeness of things that are different, and in the difference of things that are alike.
- Madame de Stael
A married man with a family will do anything for money.
- Charles De Talleyrand
Men will never establish any equality with which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money
- Alexis de Tocqueville
Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death.
- Miguel de Unamuno
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.
- Miguel de Unamuno
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
- Peter de Vries
Life is a zoo in a jungle.
- Peter de Vries
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.
- Peter de Vries
The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.
- Peter de Vries
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.
- Peter de Vries
The whole thing about matrimony is this: We fall in love with a personality, but we must live with a character.
- Peter de Vries
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.
- Peter de Vries
We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.
- Peter de Vries
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.
- Peter de Vries
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
- Dizzy Dean
Washington is a much better place if you are asking questions rather than answering them.
- John Dean
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
- Comte DeBussy-Rabutin
Everything takes more time and money.
- Anne DeCaprio
It doesn’t matter what time you were born; today is your birthday, so shut up!
- Doug DeCarlo to Eeyore, 3/7/91
Christian Biblical literalists are trusting themselves to an archaic English translation of a Latin translation of a (help me out here...) Greek? Aramaic? source. I wouldn’t even trust a VCR manual to make it through that intact.
- dperlo@nospam.toad.net (Dr. Dee) in alt.callahans
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles DeGaulle
After large expenditures of federal, state, and county funds; after much confusion generated by detours and road blocks; after greatly annoying the surrounding population with noise, dust, and fumes, the previously existing traffic jam is relocated by one half-mile.
- Alan Deitz
The fury engendered by the misspelling of a name in a column is in direct ratio to the obscurity of the mentionee.
- Alan Deitz
Were there no women, men might live like gods.
- Thomas Dekker
We are ne’er like angels ’till out passion dies.
- Dekker
You’ll NEED someone to love while you’re looking for someone TO love.
- Selagh Delaney
Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.
- Don DeLillo
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, and Indian said simply Ours.
- Vine Deloria, Jr.
Back when I got into this racket documentation came in a small box that fit on your desk, and the computer in a large crate that required a forklift... I guess this is progress.
- Jeff DelPapa (dp@world.std.com)
I’ve noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
- Larry DeLuca
I’m sorry, Dave, but I don’t think you should cast that pointer. Malloc will barf, and your program will go west, taking me with it.
- Court Demas
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
- Demosthenes
A gen’ral sets his army in array in vain, unless he fight and win the day.
- Sir Thomas Denham
Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last age.
- Sir Thomas Denham
Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
- Sir Thomas Denham
It is not unusual in philosophy for a confused and hopeless dogma to resemble an important truth.
- Daniel Dennett, "The Myth of Original Intentionality in Modelling the Mind", Oxford University Press, 1990
The security of the system should depend only on the secrecy of the keys and not on the secrecy of the algorithms.
- Dorothy Denning
It was one of those perfect summer days- the sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken.
- James Dent
Saturday night in Toledo Ohio, Is like being nowhere at all, All through the day how the hours rush by, You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
- John Denver, Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio
I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise.
- Chauncey Depew (1834-1928)
Nobody wants justice.
- Alan Dershowitz
It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think.
- Rene Descartes, "Discourse I"
Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world. Everyone thinks he has enough.
- Rene Descartes, 1637
The problem with higher mathematics, is that after a while you begin to see dark at the end of the tunnel.
- Saul Devitt misquoting someone else
There are two kinds of pedestrians...the quick and the dead.
- Lord Thomas Robert Dewar
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
- Thomas Dewar
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
- John Dewey
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.
- John Dewey
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to seek. The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor, it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic way of life.
- John Dewey
Philosophy has the task and the opportunity of helping banish the concept that human destiny here and now is of slight importance in comparison with some supernatural destiny.
- John Dewey
Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.
- John Dewey
I have discovered the art of fooling diplomats: I speak the truth and they never believe me.
- Camillo Di Cavour
People who never make a mistake end up by never doing anything worthwhile - when they do not end up in institutions. A rigid insistence on strict criteria is the road to scientific catatonia.
- Solomon Diamond
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
- Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"
Get hold of portable property.
- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of a ghost) must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
- Charles Dickens
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times; it was the age of foolishness; it was the age of wisdom.
- Charles Dickens
Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms- oftenest, God bless her!- in female breasts.
- Charles Dickens
Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.
- Charles Dickens
There is no substitute for thorough going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
- Charles Dickens
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
- Charles Dickens
Look back on time with kindly eyes, He doubtless did his best; How softly sinks his trembling son In human nature’s west!
- Emily Dickinson
Lithospheric flight paths typically result in extremely high drag coefficients, often quite a bit in excess of design parameters.
- Rick "Excessive lithospheric viscosity" Dickinson
When I want some shit, I’ll squeeze your head.
- Bob Dickson
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it
- Gordon R. Dickson
We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so.
- R. W. Dickson
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
- Philip K. Dick
Don’t let your mouth write no check that your tail can’t cash.
- Bo Diddley
All children are essentially criminal.
- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
California: The west coast of Iowa.
- Joan Didion
Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
- John Diefenbaker
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.
- Marlene Dietrich
The fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker, and Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002) at the ACN South Central Regional Conference Austin, Texas, 16 to 18 Novemver 1984
Warning: the proofreading of the program text has not been done with the same care I spent on the pages of my book.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), EWD482, "Exercises in Making Programs Robust"
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder:, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
In the good old days physicists repeated each other’s experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other’s programs, bugs included.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
PL/I --"the fatal disease"-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002), Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective
Computer Science is no more about computers than Astronomy is about telescopes.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
I am engaged in teaching, at graduate level, in producing one variety of "mathematical engineer." The most powerful test I know of for an applicant to be one of my students is that he have an absolute mastery of his native tongue: you just need to listen to him.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
If you don’t know what your program is supposed to do, you’d better not start writing it.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs but never to show their absence.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
The unrestricted use of a GOTO statement is considered to be harmful because it hampers program understandability. Consequently, a programmer should justify every use of a GOTO statement.
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930-2002)
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.
- Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- Phyllis Diller
If a taxpayer thinks he can cheat safely, he probably will.
- Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)
If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.
- Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)
The more heavily a man is supposed to be taxed, the more power he has to escape being taxed.
- Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)
To arrive at perfection, a man should have very sincere friends or inveterate enemies; because he would be made sensible of his good or ill conduct, either by the censures of the one, or the admonitions of the other.
- Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)
May you die of a curable disease.
- Ron Dippold
Get your cut throat off my knife
- Diane Diprima, "Nightmare Gallery"
A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.
- Paul A. M. Dirac
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
- Paul A. M. Dirac
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, who can’t and those in cemeteries.
- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
The oil can is mightier than the sword.
- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
Three Laws of Politics: 1) Get elected. 2) Get reelected. 3) Don’t get mad, get even.
- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
In San Francisco, Haloween is redundant.
- Will Durst
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
- Andy DiSessa as quoted by Hal Abelson
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walt Disney
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
No enemy is so terrible as a man of genius.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
My reality checks have been returned for insufficient funds.
- djwhite
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than _that_.
- J. R. Bob Dobbs
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England" 1945
The social problems raised by science must be faced and solved by the humanities.
- Harold Dodd
What’s worth doing is worth doing for money.
- Joseph Donahue
I used to herd dairy cows. Now I herd lusers. Apart from the isolation, I think I preferred the cows. They were better conversation, easier to milk, and if they annoyed me enough, I could shoot them and eat them.
- Rodger Donaldson, in the Monastery
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. (Confound those who have said our remarks before us.)
- Aelius Donatus
When you don’t have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both, it’s health. If everything is simply jake, then you’re frightened of death.
- J.P. Donleavy
No man is an Island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee.
- John Donne (c. 1571-1631), "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1624) ’Meditation XVII’
Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d have been a wagon....
- James Doohan as Mr. Scott in _The_Search_for_Spock_
When in panic or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
- Dorable
A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart.
- Doran
Vikings? There ain’t no vikings here. Just us honest farmers. The town was burning, the villagers were dead. They didn’t need those sheep anyway. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it."
- Dan Sorenson
This country needs a spear chucker, and I think we’ve got him up on this podium".
- Eugene Dorff, mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin, introducing presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. He said later he had intended to say "straight shooter
If there are any more ways I can make this more confusing, please let me know.
- Robert Dorsett
Emacs is not an editor. Emacs is a way of thinking about the world, and as such is a way of thinking about editors. The process of editing is Emacs, but Emacs is more than the process of editing. When you ask what Emacs does, you are asking a question with no answer, because Emacs doesn’t do, it is done to. Emacs just is. ... I hope this makes things clearer.
- Scott Dorsey
It’s nice to have a chat with a clever man
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intellegnece and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great saddness on Earth.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Of all national assets archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization.
- Sir A.G. Doughty
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightening.
- Frederick Douglass
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppresiion. It is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight- -lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
- Justice William O. Douglass
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. Is is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
- Justice William O. Douglass
But soon, soon, soon... the world will be a better place, with meadows and bunnies and fiber optics in every home...
- Tom Dowdy, Apple Computer
You see but you do not observe.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Forever floats that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe that falls before us, With freedom’s soil beneath our feet, And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us.
- Joseph Rodman Drake
Never shirk from doing anything which your business calls you to do. The man who is above his business may one day find his business above him.
- Drew
While human capacities to shape the environment, society, and human beings are rapidly increasing, policymaking capabilities to use those capacities remain the same.
- Yehezkel Dror
While the difficulties and dangers of problems tend to increase at a geometric rate, the knowledge and manpower qualified to deal with these problems tend to increase at an arithmetic rate.
- Yehezkel Dror
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
- Peter F. Drucker
In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a nonworld.
- Peter F. Drucker
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
- Peter F. Drucker
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter F. Drucker
When the government talks about "raising capital" it means printing it. That’s not very creative, but it’s what we’re going to do.
- Peter F. Drucker
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond, "Academical Questions"
A narrow mind begest obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Accurst ambition, how dearly I have bought you.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Bets at the first were fool-traps where the wise
Like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Beware the fury of a patient man.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Errors like straws upon the surface flow:
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
For every inch that is not a fool is rogue.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
For my part I can compare her to nothing but the sun for, like him, she takes no rest, nor ever sets in one place by to rise in another.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He, who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
He has, I know not what, of greatness in his looks, and of high fate, that almost awes me.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
He trudged along,
unknowing what he sought,
and whistled as he went,
for want of a thought
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
I never knew the old gentlemen with the scythe and hour-glass bring anything but grey hairs, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Justice is blind, he knows nobody.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Love is not in our choice, but in our fate.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Men are but children of a larger growth.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
Self-defense is nature’s oldest law.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
The gates of hell are open night and day
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way
But to return, and view the cheerful skies
In this the task and mighty labor dies.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state; and in three more decays.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
There is a pleasure in being mad, Which none but madmen know.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
These are the effects of doting age: vain doubts, and idle cares, and over caution.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
This famine has a sharp and meagre face;
’Tis death in an undress of skin and bone,
Where age and youth, their landmark ta’en away,
Look all one common sorrow.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
This is th’ original contract; these the laws
Impos’d by nature, and by nature’s cause.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
To die is landing on some distant shore.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)
If you are concerned about being criticized, you’re in the wrong job. However you vote, and whatever you do, somebody will be out there telling you that you are: (a) wrong, (b) insensitive, (c) a bleeding heart, (d) a pawn of somebody else, (e) too wishy-washy, (f) too unwilling to compromise, (g) all of the above. Consistency is not required of critics.
- Pierre S. du Pont
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all? The press is hopelessly biased or genuinely fair, depending upon whose views are being misquoted, misrepresented, or misunderstood.
- Pierre S. du Pont
Sometimes the best law of all is no law at all. Not all the world’s ills are susceptible to legislative correction.
- Pierre S. du Pont
The crusades ended several centuries ago after killing thousands of people. The most important issues arouse intense passions. Earmuffs to block the shouting are inappropriate, but filter the feedback. Joining a cause and leading a constituency are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they necessarily synonymous. Neither welfare nor profits are "obscene".
- Pierre S. du Pont
The speed at which the legislative process seems to work is in inverse proportion to your enthusiasm for the bill. If you want a bill to move quickly, committee hearings, the rules committee, and legislative procedures appear to be roadblocks to democracy. If you do not want the bill to pass, such procedures are essential to furthering representative government, etc., etc.
- Pierre S. du Pont
The titles of bills- like those of Marx Brothers movies -often have little to do with the substance of the legislation. Particularly deceptive are bills containing title buzz words such as emergency, reform, service, relief, or special. Often the emergency is of the writer’s imagination; the reform, a protection of a vested interest; the service, self-serving; the relief, an additional burden on the taxpayer; and the special, something that otherwise shouldn’t be passed.
- Pierre S. du Pont
Vote as an individual; lemmings end up falling off cliffs. Camaraderie is no substitute for common sense, and being your own man will make you sleep better.
- Pierre S. du Pont
Money can be lost...beauty normally fades with the years...health may fail or some disease can strike...friends usually vanish, perhaps die. Only memories remain for as long as you live. so, live that your memories will make you glad rather than sad.
- George Dubow
Being a scientist does not disqualify a person from being an intelligent citizen.
- Lee A. DuBridge
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
- Ducharm’s Axiom
The German method is to go to the principle of things, to select the wrong principle, and to build on that.
- Louis Dudek
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
Was einmal gedacht wurde kann nicht mehr zurueckgenommen werden! (What has been thought, can not be taken back anymore).
- Friederich Duerrenmatt, "The physicists", 1962
Curiosity in the humanities is a free person’s humility, and a humble person’s freedom.
- Joseph Duffy
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won’t even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
I guess we all know who’s the real wizard under the sheets.
- David Duke, formerly of the KKK, referring to Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers
If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.
- Alexandre Dumas, Fils
All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait and hope.
- Alexandre Dumas, Pere
Nothing succeeds like success.
- Alexandre Dumas, Pere
I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror.
- Elaine Dundy
Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
- David Dunham
An appeal is when you ask one court to show its contempt for another court.
- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
Don’t jump on a man unless he’s down.
- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals.
- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
The Puritans gave thanks for being preserved from the Indians, and we give thanks for being preserved from the Puritans.
- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.
- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
And that’s the world in a nutshell, an appropriate receptacle.
- Stan Dunn
May you go safe, my friend, across that dizzy way / No wider than a hair, by which your people go / From earth to Paradise; may you go safe today / With stars and space above, and time and stars below.
- Lord Dunsany
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
- Will Durant (1885-1981)
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
- Will Durant (1885-1981)
Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant (1885-1981)
We repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without improving our purpose.
- Will Durant (1885-1981)
Education is the transmission of civilization.
- Will and Ariel Durant
The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.
- Will and Ariel Durant
The faster the plane, the narrower the seats.
- John H. Durrell
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like... victory!
- Robert Duvall as Col. Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now"
I look around and it’s obvious to me: spreadsheet programming is turning the users into humorless accountant types. It is the embodiment of the bookkeeper’s thought pattern. If you don’t already have this peculiar pattern, then using a spreadsheet for any length of time will slowly turn your mind into the mind of a bookkeeper. The final result is not unlike the creation of mindless pod people seen in _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_.
- John C. Dvorak
IBM uses what I like to call the ’hole-in-the-ground technique’ to destroy the competition... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, ’Hey, look at all this gold, get over here fast.’ As soon as the competitor approaches the pot, he falls into the pit.
- John C. Dvorak
The spreadsheet matrix is a creative prison bound by A1 and Z1000. Walls. A psychological prison. Unlike the Black Death, nobody sees this malady. There will be no cure. Soon it will be too late.
- John C. Dvorak
Physics is the mess that results when you pollute mathematics with reality.
- Calle Dybedahl, in asr
This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of World War I. These aren’t evil men -- some of them aren’t even stupid.
- Gwynne Dyer, "WAR"
_Fiat justitia, ruat coelum._ (Do the right thing even if the heavens fall.) It’s not nearly as naive a maxim as it seems, because in the real world it often turns out that doing what is morally the right thing is also, in practical terms, the right thing to do.
- Gwynne Dyer
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
- John M. Dyer
Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo.
- Dykstra
Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
- Bob Dylan
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
- Bob Dylan
After Goliath’s defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
- Freeman Dyson
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