Rocket Scientist

I didn’t want to pursue a theme today.  Couldn’t settle on one, so I thought I’d just scroll randomly through my long list of quotes and nab a few for this Saturday.  Enjoy the eclectic weirdness of the kinds of quotes I collect.

One of the difficulties of politics is that politicians are shocked by those who are really prepared to let their thinking reach any conclusion. Political thinking consists in deciding upon the conclusion first and then finding good arguments for it. An open mind is considered irresponsible– and perhaps it really is.
                           – Richard Crossman

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.
                        – Lewis Mumford

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

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
                                 – Harriet Beecher Stowe

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.
                           – Ezra Taft Benson

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
                          – Confucius

Remember the five-step response of all experts when first confronted with a new development in their field: IGNORE, RIDICULE, ATTACK, COPY, STEAL.
                          – Arthur Jones

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist invents the parachute.

                   -George Bernard Shaw

We lived like that “Happy Family” you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.
                  -Robert Heinlein

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

                        -Douglas Adams

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

    -Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953, a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

–Ashleigh Brilliant    

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
–Jean De La Bruyre

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
–George Patton

The Americans will always do the right thing… After they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.

–Winston Churchill

I don’t know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

–Albert Einstein

Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read “Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.” This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

                        -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.
- Desmond Morris

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
– Peter Rothman

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