will make you forget it.  You will enjoy
        praise and respect from those around you; everybody loves a
        sucker.  A short trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's
        room.

Genderplex, n.:
        The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
tortoises).
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
                -- Elbert Hubbard

Genius, n.:
        A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
"bright".

George Orwell was an optimist.

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
        1.  An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
            direction.
        2.  An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
        3.  The energy required to change either one of these states
            will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
            much as to make the task totally impossible.

Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.

Get Revenge!  Live long enough to be a problem for your children!

                        -- Gifts for Children --
This is easy.  You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want.  They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements.  Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices.  If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it.  You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
                -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

                        -- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy.  But you
should never buy them clothes.  Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous.  For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them.  He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at.  If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires.  More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
                -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

                Gimmie That Old Time Religion
We will follow Zarathustra,             We will worship like the Druids,
Zarathustra like we use to,             Dancing naked in the woods,
I'm a Zarathustra booster,              Drinking strange fermented fluids,
And he's good enough for me!            And it's good enough for me!
        (chorus)                                (chorus)
In the church of Aphrodite,
The priestess wears a see through nightie,
She's a mighty righteous sightie,
And she's good enough for me!
        (chorus)
CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
        Give me that old time religion,
        Give me that old time religion,
        'Cause it's good enough for me!

Ginsberg's Theorem:
        1.  You can't win.
        2.  You can't break even.
        3.  You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
        Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
        meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
        Theorem.  To wit:
        1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
        2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
            even.
        3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
            game.

Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
to stand, and I will drain the world.

Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!

Give thought to your reputation.  Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.

Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.

Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
        Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
        probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
        some useful work done.

Go 'way!  You're bothering me!

Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
                -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"

//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH

God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.

"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
        Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech
at the end of the 1980 election.  At least he said it was a Jewish
saying; I can't find it anywhere.  I'm sure he's telling the truth
though; why would he lie about a thing like that?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
smoking and drinking beer.  But the man who cannot live on bread and
water is not fit to live!  A family may live on good bread and water in
the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
night!
                -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh

God is a polythiest

God is Dead
                -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
                -- God
Nietzsche is God
                -- The Dead

God is not dead!  He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's

God is real, unless declared integer.

God is really only another artist.  He invented the giraffe, the
elephant and the cat.  He has no real style, He just goes on trying
other things.
                -- Pablo Picasso

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
                -- Alfred Jarry

God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.

God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
                -- Mark Twain

God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
                -- Kronecker

God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.

God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
                -- Albert Einstein

God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.

God rest ye CS students now,
Let nothing you dismay.
The VAX is down and won't be up,
Until the first of May.
The program that was due this morn,
Won't be postponed, they say.
        Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
        Comfort and joy,
        Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
The bearings on the drum are gone,
The disk is wobbling, too.
We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Can't tell false from true.
And now we find that we can't get
At Berkeley's 4.2.
        (chorus)

Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.

Gold, n.:
        A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution.  It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

Goldenstern's Rules:
        1.  Always hire a rich attorney
        2.  Never buy from a rich salesman.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
                -- La Rouchefoucauld

Good day for a change of scene.  Repaper the bedroom wall.

Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.

Good day to avoid cops.  Crawl to school.

Good day to let down old friends who need help.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.

Good news.  Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.

Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.

Good-bye.  I am leaving because I am bored.
                -- George Saunders' dying words

Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23

Goto, n.:
        A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
                -- Ray Simard

Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle,
as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
        "I'm Jewish.  Count Basie's Jewish.  Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish.  The B'nai Brith is goyish.  The Hadassah is
Jewish.  Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
        "Kool-Aid is goyish.  All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish.  Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are ____very Jewish.  Fruit salad is Jewish.  Lime Jell-O is
goyish.  Lime soda is ____very goyish.  Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them ..."
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Grabel's Law:
        2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.

Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.

Grandpa Charnock's Law:
        You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.

Gray's Law of Programming:
        `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
        time as `_n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
        `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.

        GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21) -- July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl.  He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!"  Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.

Green light in A.M. for new projects.  Red light in P.M. for traffic
tickets.

Greener's Law:
        Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.

Grelb's Reminder:
        Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
        average drivers.

"Grub first, then ethics."
                -- Bertolt Brecht

Gyroscope, n.:
        A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
                -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

H. L. Mencken's Law:
        Those who can -- do.
        Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
        Those who cannot teach -- administrate.

Hacker's Law:
        The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
        a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.

Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.

... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.

Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra!  Ra!  Ra!

Half Moon tonight.  (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)

Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the the difference between life and death.
        You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
        Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Hall's Laws of Politics:
        (1)  The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
        (2)  Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
             fixed.
        (3)  Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
             military spending, and conservatives social spending in
             their own districts).

Hand, n.:
        A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Hanlon's Razor:
        Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
        stupidity.

Hanson's Treatment of Time:
        There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
        before Saturday.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
                -- Ogden Nash

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
                -- Oscar Levant

Happiness, n.:
        An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Hardware, n.:
        The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
        From "The Thirteen Clocks"

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
                -- Tom Leher

Harris's Lament:
        All the good ones are taken.

Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
        Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
        equipment ruined.

Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person.  In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats.  They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses.  We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes.  We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
                -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"

Hartley's First Law:
        You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
        on his back, you've got something.

Hartley's Second Law:
        Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

Harvard Law:
        Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
        temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
        organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand?  Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands.  It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.

                        Has your family tried 'em?
                           POWDERMILK BISCUITS
                 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
            They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
           the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
                           POWDERMILK BISCUITS
        Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
        the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
                     stains that indicate freshness.

Hatred, n.:
        A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
for play?

Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?

He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
of ever behaving "normally."
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
                -- Oscar Wilde

"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
                -- Mark Twain

He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.

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

He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."

"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
eyes ..."

He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
                -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS

He who Laughs, Lasts.

"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..."

He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.

"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."

HE:  Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!?  Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
                -- Walt Kelley

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Heaven, n.:
        A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Heavy, adj.:
        Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.

"Heisenberg may have slept here"

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
                -- Milton Friedman

Heller's Law:
        The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
        Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
        organization.

Help a swallow land at Capistrano.

Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!

Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.

"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."

Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
The boss comes by, and I play the game,
Then I turn back to net.flame.
Is there a cure (I need your views),
For someone trapped in net.news?
I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.

Here in my heart, I am Helen;
        I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
        I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
        Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
        With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
        At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
        So I stay at home with a book.
                -- Dorothy Parker

Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain?  This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt.  The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"

        Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
month.  According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
        The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
(depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
tadpole".
        Bite the wax tadpole.
        There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
        The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
bite a wax tadpole.  Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
                -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle

Heuristics are bug ridden by definition.  If they didn't have bugs,
then they'd be algorithms.

"Hey!  Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
                -- W. C. Fields

Hi there!  This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.

Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."

Hindsight is an exact science.

Hippogriff, n.:
        An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full
of surprises.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Hire the morally handicapped.

"His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice"
                -- Foghorn Leghorn

"His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier."

History repeats itself.  That's one thing wrong with history.

Hlade's Law:
        If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
        will find an easier way to do it.

Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
        Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
        out.

Hofstadter's Law:
        It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
        Hofstadter's Law into account.

Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
                -- Rex Reed

"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
                -- F. M. Hubbard

Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."

Honk if you love peace and quiet.

Honorable, adj.:
        Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach.  In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Horngren's Observation:
        Among economists, the real world is often a special case.

Horngren's Observation:
        Among economists, the real world is often a special case.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
                -- W. C. Fields

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?

How come wrong numbers are never busy?

How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
                -- Elliot, "E.T."

How doth the little crocodile
        Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
        On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
        How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
        With gently smiling jaws!
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.

How doth the VAX's C-compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear all their clothes to rags.

How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on.

How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None.  The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of
the way.

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

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

Howe's Law:
        Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
                -- Tom K. Ryan

Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.

Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
1929.  Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral
catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
the confirmatory x-ray film.  In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
Nobel Prize.

Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.

"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
                -- William Gilbert

Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
        The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
        to ..... to ........ uh ..............

I am changing my name to Crysler
I am going down to Washington, D.C.
I will tell some power broker
        What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I am changing my name to Chrysler,
I am heading for that great receiving line.
When they hand a million grand out,
        I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yessir, I'll get mine!

"I am not an Economist.  I am an honest man!"
                -- Paul McCracken

I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.
                -- Gloria Steinem

"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
                -- English Professor

I am ready to meet my Maker.  Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
                -- Winston Churchill

"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
                --English Professor, Ohio University

I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of
pre-Adamite ancestral descent.  You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule.  Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable.  I can't help it.  I was born sneering.
                -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
                -- G. K. Chesterton

I belong to no organized party.  I am a Democrat.
                -- Will Rogers

I bet the human brain is a kludge.
                -- Marvin Minsky

I can resist anything but temptation.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
                -- Joe Walsh

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
                -- Lillian Hellman

I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock.  I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar.  For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
                -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"

        "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
        "No," Said Gandalf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
        "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
        Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
        Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
        This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
        The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
        The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
        If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
        If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."

I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
                -- Isaac Asimov

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
                -- Galileo Galilei

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
                -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I don't believe in astrology.  But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
                -- James R. F. Quirk

"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating"
                -- Boss Tweed

"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
                -- Ashleigh Brilliant

I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people
waiting to abuse me.
                --Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"

        "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
        Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't--
till I tell you.  I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
        "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
        "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
        "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
        "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

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

I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?

I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship.  I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
                -- George Bernard Shaw

"I drink to make other people interesting."
                -- George Jean Nathan

I for one cannot protest the recent M. T. A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.

I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
                -- Mae West

I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
                -- Pete Seeger

I hate quotations.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a simple philosophy:
        Fill what's empty.
        Empty what's full.
        Scratch where it itches.
                -- A. R. Longworth

I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
                -- Warren Knox

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

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter.
                -- Blaise Pascal

I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
                -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.
                -- Oscar Wilde

I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.

I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.

"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
                -- Bill Hoest

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
                -- Albert Einstein

I like being single.  I'm always there when I need me.
                -- Art Leo

I like work ...
I can sit and watch it for hours.

I like your game but we have to change the rules.

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

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up."
                -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"

I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts

I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.

I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.

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

        "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.

"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But ...
        "Is that all?" asked Alice.
        "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
                -- Ogden Nash

I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

"I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
HAW"!!'"
                -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know.
                -- Mark Twain

I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
                -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
                   Holes and the Fate of Stars"

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.  There's
a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
                -- Gallagher

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
`Y.'"

"I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
blender."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
garage door."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
Julian to Gregorian."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
static cling."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
cottage cheese sculpture."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."

"I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
transplant."

"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."

"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."

"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."

"I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say
tuned."

"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
need worrying about."

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
man.

I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
sister.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
die in.
                -- George McGovern

I'm in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?
                -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate

I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary.  (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.

I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.

I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
life.

I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
soon ...

I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
                -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"

IBM had a PL/I,
        Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
        It was a total loss.

Idiot Box, n.:
        The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Idiot, n.:
        A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
                -- Roy Santoro

If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
passes.  Someone in the group has to be the manager.
                -- T. Cheatham

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.

If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.

If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
                -- John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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

If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
                -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"

If anything can go wrong, it will.

If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?

"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"

If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?

If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.

... if forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.

If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.

If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.

If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.

If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.

If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.

If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.

If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
hands.

If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?

"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
                -- Yiddish saying

If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
                -- Dorothy Parker

If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
                -- Eugene P. Gallagher

If I had any humility I would be perfect.
                -- Ted Turner

"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
                -- Albert Einstein

If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
                -- Bert Whitney

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?

If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
of it.
                -- Thomas Carlyle

If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.

If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
you've got in the house.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.

If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.

If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
                -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"

If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.

If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.

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 might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
                -- Vannevar Bush

If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
                -- Pope John Paul I

If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
                -- Norm Schryer

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.  The
college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
rally their jaded spirits.  I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
interest in knowledge.  The wise instructor accomplishes this by
opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
himself.  The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me!"
                -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.

If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.  If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.  If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
                -- Reverend Chichester

If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
                -- Art Hoppe

If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.

If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
                -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are
headed.

If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
                -- Marguerite Emmons

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
                -- J. Paul Getty

If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.

If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.

If you can't be good, be careful.  If you can't be careful, give me a
call.

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
                -- Harry S Truman

If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?

If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.

If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.

If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
                -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin

"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
                -- Winston Churchill

If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

"If you have to hate, hate gently"

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
                -- Graham Summer

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
                -- Maslow

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you.  This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
                -- Mark Twain

If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.  But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.

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

If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
                -- Earl Wilson

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
                -- Richard M. Nixon

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
                -- Richard Nixon

If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
you to say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw
another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
been indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to
avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
having another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure
that they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting
someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.

"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means."
                -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"

If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
tomorrow morning, sleep late.
                -- Henny Youngman

If you're happy, you're successful.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
                -- Benjamin Disraeli

If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
universe?

If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
                -- Ronald Reagan

Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
        Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
        Et le m^omerade horgrave.
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier

Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer.  It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?
"Is it PC compatible?"

Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
                -- Edgar A. Shoaff

Impartial, adj.:
        Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail.  Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.

In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.

        In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
junior, what are you up to?"
        "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
        "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
        "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
expression on his face.
        Comes along a wolf.  "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
        "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
devour wolves."
        "Are you crazy?  Where is your academic honesty?"
        "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that really counts.

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
                -- Adlai Stevenson

In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
                -- The Peter Principle

In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.

In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.

In case of injury notify your superior immediately.  He'll kiss it and
make it better.

"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
                -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

In English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
will only make it mushy.
                -- Mark Twain

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, "The Devil's Dictionary"

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."

[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ...  You
could strike sparks anywhere.  There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that.  Our energy would simply `prevail'.  There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?

In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
                -- Egyptian Book of the Dead

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
                -- Alan Perlis

In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
a loaf of bread.  However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy.  If you
stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
enough to punch you.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
                -- Art Linkletter

Incumbent, n.:
        Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Information Center, n.:
        A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.

Ingrate, n.:
        A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
                -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ink, n.:
        A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Innovation is hard to schedule.
                -- Dan Fylstra

Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.

Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.

Interpreter, n.:
        One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

        INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Iron Law of Distribution:
        Them that has, gets.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
                -- Ralph Emerson

Is your job running?  You'd better go catch it!

Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?

Issawi's Laws of Progress:
        The Course of Progress:
                Most things get steadily worse.
        The Path of Progress:
                A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
                -- Alan Perlis

        It is always preferable to visit home with a friend.  Your
parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all
to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will
have to act like mature human beings ...
                -- Playboy, January 1983

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
                -- Voltaire

It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
to use either.
                -- Mark Twain

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
                -- R. Serling

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
                -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.

It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
                -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.

It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
                -- Woody Allen

It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.

It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
                -- Gore Vidal

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
                -- Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is now 10 p.m.  Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
                -- Elizabeth Carpenter

It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
                -- Voltaire

It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
                -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"

It is the business of little minds to shrink.
                -- Carl Sandburg

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
                -- Hawkwind

It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."

It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.

"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.  Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it.  I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at).  There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread.  One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime."
                -- Thomas Aldrich

        It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers.  The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper.  Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
        Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
                -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
                -- Andrew Jackson

"It's bad luck to be superstitious."
                -- Andrew W. Mathis

"It's easier said than done."
... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
being right.

"It's Fabulous!  We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
                -- Macy's

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's.  It
isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
                -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.

It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
                -- Phil White

"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
                -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston

It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
                -- Alexander Korda

It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
                -- Woody Allen

It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.

                     JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
                          by Mark Isaak
        Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
        So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
        "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
        "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
        "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
        Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
        "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
        No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
        legislature is in session.

Jenkinson's Law:
        It won't work.

Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.

Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!

Johnson's First Law:
        When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
        most inconvenient possible time.

Jone's Law:
        The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
        to blame it on.

Jone's Motto:
        Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Jones's First Law:
        Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
        endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
        obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
        importance of their original contribution.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.

"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
                -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"

Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!

Justice is incidental to law and order.
                -- J. Edgar Hoover

Justice is incidental to law and order.
                -- J. Edgar Hoover

Justice, n.:
        A decision in your favor.

Katz' Law:
        Man and nations will act rationally when all other
        possibilities have been exhausted.

Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.

Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.

Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.

Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
        1.  The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
            straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
            force is technically termed "car suck").
        2.  Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
            than "Watch this!"

Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now ... try to get something DONE!

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."

Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
        Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
        and parking for the faculty.

Kin, n.:
        An affliction of the blood

Kinkler's First Law:
        Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
        All the easy problems have been solved.

"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."

Kiss me twice.  I'm schizophrenic.

Kiss your keyboard goodbye!

Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.

Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.

Kleptomaniac, n.:
        A rich thief.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.

Know what I hate most?  Rhetorical questions.
                -- Henry N. Camp

Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
        The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Labor, n.:
        One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Lackland's Laws:
        1.  Never be first.
        2.  Never be last.
        3.  Never volunteer for anything

Lactomangulation, n.:
        Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Laetrile is the pits

Langsam's Laws:
        1) Everything depends.
        2) Nothing is always.
        3) Everything is sometimes.

Larkinson's Law:
        All laws are basically false.

        Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots.  Remember?  One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones.  She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong?  Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week.  What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
whatsoever.  They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
Lassie filed the applications for.
                -- Dave Barry

Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.

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

Law of Communications:
        The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
        between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
        area of misunderstanding.

Law of Probable Dispersal:
        Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
        distributed.

Law of Selective Gravity:
        An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
        The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
        directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
        You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
        bread to butter.

Laws of Serendipity:
        1.  In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
            something.
        2.  If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
            be engaged in making an inferior one.

Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
        No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
        approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Leibowitz's Rule:
        When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
        hold the hammer with both hands.

LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
        Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
        Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
        you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe.  As a matter of
        fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
        a sick sense of humor.

        LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader.  Others think you are pushy.  Most
Leo people are bullies.  You are vain and dislike honest criticism.
Your arrogance is disgusting.  Leo people are thieves.

Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.

Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
You first.

Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return.  Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars:
For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return
around under your armpit.  No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours
poring over a sweat-stained document.  So even if you owe money, you
can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it
to you, just to avoid an audit.  What does he care?  It's not his
money.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office.  We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places.  They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
        Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
        Sevenoaks

Lewis's Law of Travel:
        The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
        anyone, ever.

Liar, n.:
        A lawyer with a roving commission.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
        Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
        desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal.  Be gracious and
        polite.  Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.

        LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality.  If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay.  Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent.  Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.

Lie, n.:
        A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.

Lieberman's Law:
        Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.

Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.

"Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove."

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
                -- Alan McKay

Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
        They usually have virgins,
        And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.

Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.

Linus:  I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow.  Maybe
        we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
        No, that's giving up.  I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
        better.

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.

Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
before.

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things ___YOU want to do?

Lockwood's Long Shot:
        The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
        one in a million, but once would be enough.

Look out!  Behind you!

Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"

Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.

Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
                -- Ogden Nash

Love is sentimental measles.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
                -- H. L. Mencken

Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
to.

        Love's Drug
My love is like an iron wand
        That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
        That I take before me bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
        That I drink when i be dry;
And I shall love thee still my dear,
        Until my wife is wise.

Lowery's Law:
        If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
        anyway.

LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
        There's always one more bug.

Lunatic Asylum, n.:
        The place where optimism most flourishes.

Lysistrata had a good idea.

"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
                -- Winston Churchill

Mad, adj.:
        Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
                -- W. C. Fields

Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Magnocartic, adj.:
        Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
carts.
                -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

Magpie, n.:
        A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Maier's Law:
        If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
        disposed of.
Corollaries:
        1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
        2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
            50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
            obtain a correspondence with the theory.

Main's Law:
        For every action there is an equal and opposite government
        program.

Maintainer's Motto:
        If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
        as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Majority, n.:
        That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.

Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system.  Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space.  It
has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
                -- System V.2 administrator's guide

Malek's Law:
        Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
                -- Lily Tomlin

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
                -- Oscar Wilde

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
                -- Wernher von Braun

Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
                -- Mark Twain

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
                -- A. Einstein

Man, n.:
        An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete?  Your guess is as good as
mine.  Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"

Manual, n.:
        A unit of documentation.  There are always three or more on a
given item.  One is on the shelf; someone has the others.  The
information you need in in the others.
                -- Ray Simard

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

Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
        Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
        simple yes or no answer.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
                -- Voltaire

"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."

Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
                -- Jules Feiffer

May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts

May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!

May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.

May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.

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

Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.

Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city
nativity scene removed:
        "They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men
        and a virgin in the whole organization."

McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
        If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
        $19.95.

Meader's Law:
        Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
        everyone you know, only more so.

Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.

Meeting, n.:
        An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.

Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri.  Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
had split before.  Thus was the Empire forged.
                -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams

Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
        The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.

Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
        The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
        cork makes when it is popped.

Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
        All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.

Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
        Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
        is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
        can never hope to acquire it.

Menu, n.:
        A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.

Meskimen's Law:
        There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
        do it over.

Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.

Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.

Micro Credo:
        Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.

"Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."

Miksch's Law:
        If a string has one end, then it has another end.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
                -- Groucho Marx

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
                -- Groucho Marx

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
                -- Susan Ertz

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"

Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.

Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.

Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.

Misfortune, n.:
        The kind of fortune that never misses.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Miss, n.:
        A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.

Mitchell's Law of Committees:
        Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
        held to discuss it.

MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
  Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie        36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water                             2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar              2 tablespoons lemon juice
  Grated rind of one lemon                 Butter or margarine
  Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.  Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate.  Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes.  Add lemon
juice and rind.  Cool.  Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Cover with top
crust.  Trim and flute edges together.  Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape.  Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden.  Serve warm.  Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
                -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box

Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.

Molecule, n.:
        The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is distinguished
from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
atom in that it is an ion ...
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
        If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
        it wasn't worth doing.

Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.

Monday, n.:
        In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots

Mophobia, n.:
        Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.

                MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
Saturday night.  The match started with a long period of silence while
the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
paraphrase.  The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
their anal-retentive personalities.  At this the Rogerians' star player
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka."  This started a
fight and the match was called by officials.

More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.  One
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
extinction.  Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
                -- Woody Allen

Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
        Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
        be out of a job.

Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
                -- Frank Zappa

Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.

Mr. Cole's Axiom:
        The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
        population is growing.

Murphy's Discovery:
        Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
        women?  They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and
        everything will be all right."  And what happens?  Nine months
        later, you're in trouble!

Murphy's Law is recursive.  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.

Murphy's Law of Research:
        Enough research will tend to support your theory.

        Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile.  Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures.  One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation.  In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
        They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement..  Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
        The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago.  The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
        "This is crazy!"  Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he
spits in the sergeants face.
        "Murray!"  Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Mustgo, n.:
        Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
long it has become a science project.
                -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"

My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right
through my ALU.  I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens.  I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.

My love runs by like a day in June,
        And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
        In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
        Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
        And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
                -- Dorothy Parker

My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
        And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
        And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
        As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
        And I wish he were in Asia.
                -- Dorothy Parker

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
        And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
        And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
        Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
        And I wish I'd never met him.
                -- Dorothy Parker

"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"

Mythology, n.:
        The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Naeser's Law:
        You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
        damnfoolproof.

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?  Everything he
          says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
          will be right.
                -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
                -- Abraham Lincoln

Necessity is a mother.

Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.

Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.

Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.

Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off

Never drink coke in a moving elevator.  The elevator's motion coupled
with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations.  People tend to
change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
fly in the window.  Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
have windows.

Never eat more than you can lift.
                -- Miss Piggy

Never hit a man with glasses.  Hit him with a baseball bat.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
                -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.

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

Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.
                -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
                -- R. A. Heinlein

New crypt.  See /usr/news/crypt.

New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself.  Apply within.

New systems generate new problems.

New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
                -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary

New York is real.  The rest is done with mirrors.

New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
                -- The Grateful Dead

Newlan's Truism:
        An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
        economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

NEWS FLASH!!
        Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
        German pole-vault champion.

                        *** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!  Details at eleven!

Newton's Fourth Law:  Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.

Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
        A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Next Friday will not be your lucky day.  As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
                -- F. J. Raymond

Nihilism should commence with oneself.

Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.

Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hack