It’s an experience like no other experience I can describe, the best thing that can happen to a scientist, realizing that something that’s happened in his or her mind exactly corresponds to something that happens in nature. It’s startling every time it occurs. One is surprised that a construct of one’s own mind can actually be realized in the honest-to-goodness world out there. A great shock, and a great, great joy.
- Leo Kadanoff
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
You are free and that is why you are lost.
- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
- Alfred Kahn
The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.
- Genghis Kahn, 1226
One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people.
- Genghis Khan
Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes.
- Henry J. Kaiser
What a man can imagine or conceive in his mind he can accomplish. Impossibilities are possible as thinking men make them so.
- Henry J. Kaiser
It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
- Howard Kandel
I think it’s a beautiful day to go to the zoo and feed the ducks. To the lions.
- Brian Kantor
Do what is right, though the world may perish.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no doubt....but although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does not all arise OUT OF experience.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
The desire of a man for a woman is not directed at her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman. That she is a human being is of no concern to him.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe- the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
In a nutshell, I started this little company called Lotus and made this software product that several million people wound up buying. The little company turned into this enourmous thing with thousands of employees making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And it felt awful to me. so I left. I just walked away one day.
- Mitch Kapor
Every man has three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.
- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)
The more the change, the more it is the same thing.
- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)
It has been said [by Anatole France], ’it is not by amusing oneself that one learns,’ and, in reply: ’it is *only* by amusing oneself that one can learn.’
- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we’ve solved it.
- Arthur Kasspe
Calm down. It’s only ones and zeros
- Sam Kass (paraphrasing Gene Spafford)
Brevity and superficiality are often concomitants.
- Amrom Katz
Inventing is easy for staff outfits. Stating a problem is much harder. Instead of stating problems, people like to pass out half-accurate statements together with half-available solutions which they can’t finish and which they want you to finish.
- Amrom Katz
Most organizations can’t hold one idea at a time... Thus complementary ideas are always regarded as competitive. Further, like a quantized pendulum, an organization can jump from one extreme to the other, without ever going through the middle.
- Amrom Katz
Statements by respected authorities which tend to agree with a writer’s viewpoint are always handy.
- Amrom Katz
The difficulty of the coordination task often blinds one to the fact that a fully coordinated piece of paper is not supposed to be either the major or the final product of the organization, but it often turns out that way.
- Amrom Katz
Try to find out who’s doing the work, not who’s writing about it, controlling it, or summarizing it.
- Amrom Katz
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
- Amrom Katz
Watch out for formal briefings, they often produce an avalanche. (Definition: A high-level snow job of massive and overwhelming proportions.)
- Amrom Katz
Where are the calculations that go with the calculated risk?
- Amrom Katz
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
- Walter Kaufmann
I once complained to my father that I didn’t seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad’s advice? ’Margo, don’t be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep.’
- Margo Kaufman
Remarriage is an excellent test of just how amicable your divorce was.
- Margo Kaufman
Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb.
- Stanley Kaufman
Do not try to solve all life’s problems at once - learn to dread each day as it comes.
- Donald Kaul
A crash is when your competitor’s program dies. When your program dies, it is an ’idiosyncrasy.’ Frequently, crashes are followed with a message like ’ID 02.’ ’ID’ is an abbreviation for ’idiosyncrasy’ and the number that follows indicates how many more months of testing the product should have had.
- Guy Kawasaki, "The Macintosh Way"
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.
- Danny Kaye
Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American
Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable. As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?
- Alan Kay, "Scientific American"
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced- even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
- John Keats
Nothing is finer for the purpose of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.
- John Keats
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.
- John Keats
There is not a fiercer hell than failure in a great object.
- John Keats
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll invite himself over for dinner.
- Calvin Keegan
There are, however, people in this world who seldom pick up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an anchorperson. While such willfully uninformed citizens are rare, emerging from seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great national significance, they do exist.
- Joe Keenan
In some of the poorer areas of the world it is sadly true that sex is the only luxury available to the ordinary man. Whether the ordinary woman also considers it a luxury is open to question.
- Hugh L. Keenleyside
Paper has a genius for multiplication that cannot be equalled anywhere else in nature.
- Hugh L. Keenleyside
At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to school, but you can’t tell who the best people are. That worries the hell out of me.
- Barnaby C. Keeney
Learning algorithms from Knuth is almost as bad as learning physics from Newton in the Latin original.
- Jeffrey Kegler
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
- Garrison Keillor
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can’t read any of them.
- Roy Keir
College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
- Helen Keller
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller
Security is mostly a superstition. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller
The best-educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
- Helen Keller
I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.
- Garrison Keillor
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
- Stan Kelly-Bootle
Do it big or stay in bed.
- Opera producer Larry Kelly
Last guys don’t finish nice.
- Stanley Kelly
Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.
- Vesta M. Kelly, Saturday Evening Post
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
- Walt Kelly, Pogo
HE: Let’s end it all, bequeathin’ our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
- Walt Kelly
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
- Walt Kelly
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
- Walt Kelly
There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
- Walt Kelly
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
- Walt Kelly
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perservereingly during fifty-five years; that word is failure.
- Lord Kelvin
[The vector] has never been of the slightest use to any creature.
- Lord Kelvin
Cynicism is disillusioned idealism.
- Harry Kemelman
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
- Thomas A. Kempis
How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.
- Thomas A. Kempis
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and brings them to a conclusion, where he who does not love, faints and lies down.
- Thomas A. Kempis
When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.
- Thomas A. Kempis
My idea of gun control is a steady aim.
- Jack Kemp
People who take issue with control of population do not understand that if it is not done in a gracefull way, nature will do it in a brutal fashion.
- H. Kendall
Heroism is endurance for one moment more.
- George F. Kennan
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
- Florynce Kennedy
The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
- Florynce Kennedy
Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Nixon and the White House.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) in 1960 As given in A. Schlesinger Jr’s, "A Thousand Days"
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), Inaugural address, 20 Jan 1961
If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitiable.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
It is a time for a new generation ofleadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities.For there is a new world to be won.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
One man can make a difference. Every man should try.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Private enterprise makes OK private action which would be considered dishonest in public action.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Washington [DC] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
When I became President, what surprised me most was that things were just as bad as I’d been saying they were.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existance. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F. Kennedy
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies.
- Robert F. Kennedy
Some men see things as they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things that never were and say, "Why not?"
- Robert F. Kennedy
The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down.
- Frank Kent, Baltimore Sun
Never build after you are five and forty; have five years’ income in hand before you lay a brick; and always calculate the expense at double the estimate.
- Kent
There’s a fine line between bad habits and style.
- kent@armagnac.dec.com
I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
- Brian W. Kernighan
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- Brian W. Kernighan
As a wise programmer once said, "Floating point numbers are like sandpiles: every time you move one, you lose a little sand and you pick up a little dirt." And after a few computations, things can get pretty dirty.
- Kernighan & Plauger, "The Elements of Programming Style"
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
- Kernighan & Plauger, "The Elements of Programming Style"
Some compilers allow a check during execution that subscripts do not exceed array dimensions. This is a help, but not sufficient. First, many programmers do not use such compilers because They’re not efficient. (Presumably, this means that it is vital to get the wrong answers quickly.)
- Kernighan & Plauger, "The Elements of Programming Style"
C provides the infinitely-abusable GOTO statement, and labels to branch to. Formally, the GOTO is never necessary, and in practice it is almost always easy to write code without it.
- Kernighan & Ritchie, "The C Programming Language"
sed was designed and implemented by Lee McMahon, using ed as a base. awk was designed and implemented by Al Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan, by a much less elegant process. Naming a language after its authors also shows a certain poverty of imagination.
- Kernighan and Pike, "The UNIX Programming Environment", p. 131.
There are three sides to every story- yours, mine, and all that lie between.
- Jody Kern
In dealing with their own problems, faculty members are the most extreme conservatives. In dealing with other people’s problems, they are the world’s extreme liberals.
- Clark Kerr
I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
- Jean Kerr
David Merrick, displaying his sneaky knack for extending the life of a production beyond the reasonable expectations of the playwright’s mother.
- Walter Kerr
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
- Ken Kesey
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
- Charles F. Kettering
If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.
- Charles F. Kettering
There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
- Charles F. Kettering
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
- Charles F. Kettering
If your doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.
- Charles Kettering
Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerposts on the road to achievement.
- Charles R. Kettering
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
In the long run we are all dead.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
There was no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency ... Inflation engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction. and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
It may be that a genius of the so-called universal type-- an Aristotle, for example, or a Leibniz or a Leonardo da Vinci-- is one whose mind has the group property.
- Cassius J. Keyser
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, And this be our motto: "In God we trust;" And the star- spangled banner, O long may it wave O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
- Francis Scott Key
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
Your presence is requested at your earliest convenience. Please be sure your earliest convenience is at 1pm.
- Sher Khan (CEO Kahn Industries)
Every action or decision of an institution must be intended to keep the institution machinery working.
- Robert N. Kharasch
The expert judgement of an institution, when the matters involve continuation of the institution’s operations, is totally predictable, and hence the finding is totally worthless.
- Robert N. Kharasch
The finding of threats to security by a security office is totally predictable, and hence the finding is totally worthless.
- Robert N. Kharasch
Threats to security will be found.
- Robert N. Kharasch
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best nightcap.
- Kincaid
What is zero to analysts? It is a number that’s smaller than epsilon for any epsilon.
- Prof. David Kinderlehrer, Advanced Calc 21-455
Any improbable event which would create maximum confusion if it did occur, will occur.
- H. S. Kindler
Never assume anything except a 4 1/2 percent mortgage.
- David Kindred
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Charles Kingsley
Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or mine, there is a fairy-land.
- Kingsley
To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer
- Morris Kingston
To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer.
- Morris Kingston
If you want to read about love and marriage, you have to buy two separate books.
- Alan King
America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.
- Charlie King
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are as many Communists in the freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.
- Stephen King
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
- Stephen King
Never attribute to incompetence that which can be explained as allegience to the Ultimate Evil.
- Geoffrey Kinnel
Are you sure there are no hidden cameras up there?
- Arizona Rep. Don Kinney, while stuffing $55,000 into a gym bag
The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform.
- Alfred Kinsey
If you accept the necessity for freedom of expression, it follows that in an intellectual controversy any attempt to coerce rather than to persuade ... is not merely an offense against the person so coerced, but an erosion of the mechanics which make free expression work, and therefore make it possible.
- Micheal Kinsley
He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
If I were going to create a New Universe, I’d rest on the seventh day.
- Jack Kirby
We all have the capability for a good idea. We should have the ability to protect them, and the wisdom to share them.
- Jack Kirby
The usefulness of any meeting is inversely proportional to the attendance.
- Lane Kirkland
Nature gave man two ends-one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man’s success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
- George R. Kirkpatrick
The sun goes down just when you need it the most.
- Jon Kirkup
Back to a simpler time of skins and stones! When things go wrong, the answer’s in the stars, or evil spells, or reading chicken bones, or sacrifices to all gods but Mars.
- Jack Kirwan
If nuclear, therefore it must be bad; Denounce such power with a protest squeal. The scientists made it (surely they’re all mad), It’s better not to think and just to feel.
- Jack Kirwan
The atom was not meant to be explored. Its splitting was the work of brazen fools. Let’s march until the Stone Age is restored, With rocks and flints our kind of splitting tools. Atomic Power? Seal it in its grave. We are Progressive. Onward to the cave!
- Jack Kirwan
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
- Henry Kissinger
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
- Henry Kissinger
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, forsight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.
- Henry Kissinger
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
- Henry Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
- Henry Kissinger
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
- Marvin Kitman
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
- Marvin Kitman
It is inconceivable that three competing networks, working independently in complete secrecy, could produce by accident twenty-six new series so similar in quality.
- Marvin Kitman
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
- Marvin Kitman
The words ’I am...’ are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.
- A. K. Kitselman
How is it... that some feminists still feel able to draw on biological determinist arguments... to claim that women are naturally, biologically, innately superior to men? ... There is no uniquely feminine essence, existing above and beyond social conditioning, that makes us creative, empathetic, intuitive, nurturant, non-violent, and at one with Mother Earth.
- Celia Kitzinger
Sure, we can raise money! We can raise your Activities Fee.
- "Senator" Josh Knauer, on how Student Senate should raise money
He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
- Von Knebel
A funny thing happened to me the other day. My dog sat up on its hind legs, tilted its head, and said, Creatures such as I once ruled this planet. It had never spoken before, and it hasn’t spoken since.
- Kevin Knight
Scientists in New Guinea have discovered a culture whose members communicate exclusively through the use of plan files.
- Kevin Knight
The difference between humans and animals is that humans can fabricate bogus explanations for all of their behaviors.
- Kevin Knight
This memo is to notify you that you are happy in your job. If you have any questions, please contact the Personnel office at extension x3088. Thank you.
- Kevin Knight
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
- Erwin Knoll
The length of debate varies inversely with the complexity of the issue.
- Robert Knowles
When the issue is simple, and everyone understands it, debate is interminable.
- Robert Knowles
I have learned To spell hors d’oeuvres Which still grates on Some people’s n’oeuvres.
- Warren Knox
It turns out that a decimal point by itself is equivalent to ’0.0’. Let’s hope people don’t use that fact.
- Donald E. Knuth (Somewhere in the TEX source)
A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
- Donald E. Knuth
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
- Donald E. Knuth
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
- Donald E. Knuth
There has been a long history of optimizing the wrong things, using elaborate mechanisms to produce beautiful code in cases that hardly ever arise in practice, while doing nothing about frequently occurring situations.
- Donald E. Knuth
You’re bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything.
- Donald E. Knuth
Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer’s frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.
- Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, London, 1970, p. 253
God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out.
- Arthur Koestler
Scientists are peeping toms at the Keyhole of Eternity.
- Arthur Koestler
An experiment is reproducible until another laboratory tries to repeat it.
- Dr. Alexander Kohn
We have the most [thorough] test guy in the world... [I showed him this program and he asked,] ’but Rob, what if time runs backward?’
- Rob Kolstad (kolstad@sun.com)
For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class.
- Hans Konig
Having me for postmaster is like having Zippy for president. I dare you to quote me on that.
- Chris Koningsberg (CKK), The Postmaster who never sleeps.
It’s not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
- Alexander Korda
An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
- Michael Korda
Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
- Art Kosatka
Humility is the better part of wisdom, and is most becoming in man. But let no one disparage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness.
- Ferenc Kossuth
The most undesirable things are the most certain (e. g., death and taxes).
- Martin S. Kottmeyer
Television, a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.
- Ernie Kovacs
Metric is definitely communist. One monetary system, one language, one weight and measurement system, one world - all communist! We know the West was won by the inch, foot, yard, and mile.
- Dean Krakel, Director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame
In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly, the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning.
- H. A. Kramers
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements, sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
- Hajime Karatsu
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient. Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in the long run. I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary challenging spirit today.
- Hajime Karatsu
Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
I and my public understand each other very well; it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
One’s need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Psychoanalysis is that mental illnes for which it regards itself a therapy.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn too soon how children do not come into the world.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket.
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Sanity and insanity overlap a fine gray line.
- Charles van Kriedt
True tolerance means looking differences squarely in the eye and admitting the appalling fact that when other people seem to differ from us, this is because they actually believe their view of the world to be true.
- Elizabeth Kristol, "New York Times", September 25, 1989
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want.
- Irving Kristol
Language exists only on the surface of our consciousness. The great human struggles are played out in silence and in the ability to express oneself.
- Franz Xavier Kroetz
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
- Kronecker
The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
- Louis Kronenberger
An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use.
- Robert L. Kruse, "Data Structures and Program Design"
Berlin is the testicles of the West. Each time I give them a yank, they holler.
- Nikita S. Krushchev (1894-1971)
Politicians are the same the world over: they promise to build a bridge even when there is no river.
- Nikita S. Krushchev (1894-1971)
The Communist system must be based on the will of the people, and if the people should not want that system, then that people should establish a different system.
- Nikita S. Krushchev (1894-1971)
We will bury you!
- Nikita S. Krushchev (1894-1971)
Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
Metaphysics may be, after all, only the art of being sure of something that is not so, and logic only the art of going wrong with confidence.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
Perhaps we are wiser, less selfish and more far-seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfectly all these good things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.
- Joseph Wood Krutch
The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.
- Stanley Kubrick
If introductory physics were taught the way that introductory computer science seems to be taught, students would not see equational statements of Newton’s Laws until their first semester of graduate school.
- Jerry Kuch
Things are seldom as bad as they first seem. Unless, of course, we’re talking about a 9 centimeter, gaping avulsive wound of the occipital-parietal region of the skull. Then you’re pretty much stuck, since no matter how you look at it (and that’s tough because it’ll be around the side and back of your head, quite far from where your eyes normally are, although something that could give you such a wound could stand a chance of relocating your eyes, but I digress) things aren’t that good.
- Jerry Kuch
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
- Kulawiec
What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?
- Irv Kupcinet
In a mad world only the mad are sane.
- Akira Kurosawa
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.
- Harold S. Kushner
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