Almanac chapter 16: Quotes

                                     Chapter 16

                                       QUOTES

              "Things are always at  their  best  in  their  beginning."  -
         Bliase Pascal

              "When  I  was  younger, I could remember anything, whether it
         had happened or not." - Mark Twain

              "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen  and
         stupidity." - Harlan Ellison, science fiction author

              "History is a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G.
         Wells

              "...is  like  trying  to  nail  jelly  to  a tree." - from an
         unknown book  about  a  the  difficulty  of  learning  a  computer
         programming language.

                          Starkle,  starkle, little twink,
                            Who the heck I am you think?
                     I'm not under the akafluence  of  incohol,
                               It's  just  that  some
                                 thinkle peep I am.
                                             - unknown

                     "People with great minds talk about ideas.
                    People with average minds talk about events.
                 People with small minds talk about other people."
                                              - Ann Landers

              "I  believe  I've  found  the missing link between animal and
         civilized man. It is us." - Konrad Lorenz

              "I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead without it."
         - Jonathan Winters

              "I had a monumental idea this  morning,  but  I  didn't  like
         it..." -Samuel Goldwyn

              [as  a  journalist] ..."You are responsible not only for what
         you do, you are responsible for what  you  see."  -  an  outspoken
         Soviet journalist

              "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." - Armand Hammer

              "It  is better to accomplish perfectly a very small amount of
         work, than to half do ten times as much." - from the book, Inquire
         Within, 1858

              "When we all remember we are mad, the mysteries disappear and
         life stands explained." -Mark Twain

              "A man with a watch knows what time it is;  a  man  with  two
         watches isn't so sure." - unknown

              This  line of poetry was generated by a computer working with
         random poetry software: "My engine starts to rev when you blow  in
         my beer."

              "This  field  of physics is so virginal that no human eyeball
         has ever set foot in it." - unidentified Ph.D student

              "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as  much
         as you please." - Mark Twain

              "We have no system; we have no rules, but we have a big scrap
         heap."  -  Thomas  Edison  (Some  of  his  workers  called  it the
         "dungyard.")

              "You can observe a lot just by watchin'." - Yogi Berra

              "Someday, composers  will  write  music  only  computers  can
         sing." - Clifford Pickover, IBM researcher

              "Creative  people must entertain lots of silly ideas in order
         to receive the occasional strokes of genius." - Marshall Cook

              What was this artist  trying  to  say?  "In  my  most  recent
         paintings, I find myself stressing the linear antipathy of massive
         forms   of  light  in  contra-distinction  to  cattogrammatic  and
         syncogrammatic antipodes of stasis."

              "I telephoned the Mensa offices in England.  Explaining how a
         friend of mine was, by their definition, thick  (he  had,  I  told
         them,  an I.Q. of 80 or so), I suggested that perhaps he and I, or
         even a group, could add together our  intelligence  quotients  and
         apply  for  some sort of joint membership. While the person at the
         other end of the  telephone  went  off  to  inquire  whether  they
         accepted entrants on these terms, I quietly replaced the receiver,
         my last doubts confirmed." - Nigel Ffooks

              "Procrastination  means  never having to say you're sorry." -
         Toni Epstein, New York

              "It's  a pity that taxpayers don't read science fiction. They
         might know about the age they're buying." - unknown

              "Every serving of processed food is treated with one or  more
         dyes,    bleaches,    emulsifiers,   antioxidants,   moisturizers,
         desiccants,  extenders,  thickeners,  disinfectants,   defoliants,
         fungicides,   neutralizers,  artificial  sweeteners,  hydrolyzers,
         anticaking  and   antifoaming   agents,   curers,   hydrogenators,
         fortifiers,  antibiotics,  arsenic,  artificial  sex hormones, and
         pesticides." - Joseph Beasley, author of The Impact  of  Nutrition
         on the Health of Americans

              "I was afraid that we were at a place where we were no longer
         going to be inheriting life from our fathers, but we were going to
         be borrowing it from our children." - Robert Redford

              After  Dentist  Horace  Wells  used  anesthesia for the first
         time  in  history  to  extract  a  tooth  painlessly  (1844),  his
         associates  suggested  that  he  get a patent. He said, "Let it be
         free as the air."

              "Overheard at a perfume counter in a large department  store:
         'If  this  stuff  really  worked,  would  I be standing here eight
         hours a day?'" - Ann Landers

              "What we ought to do now, obviously, is suspend all  activity
         until we can hold a plebiscite to select a panel that will appoint
         a  commission  authorized to hire a new team of experts to restudy
         the feasibility of compiling an index of all the  committees  that
         have  in  the  past  inventoried and cataloged the various studies
         aimed at finding out what happened to all the policies  that  were
         scrapped  when new policies were decided on by somebody else. Once
         that's out of the way, I think we could go full steam  ahead  with
         some  preliminary  plans for a new study with Federal funds of why
         nothing can be done  right  now."  -  North  Dakota  Senator  I.E.
         Solberg

              "Of  course  truth  is  stranger than fiction. We see so much
         less of it." - Ivern Ball

              "There's no way to rule innocent men." - Ayn Rand

              "I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this  world
         to  live  up to your expectations and you are not in this world to
         live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we  find
         each  other,  it's  beautiful.  If not, it can't be helped." - The
         Gestalt prayer, by psychologist Fritz Perls

              "As soon  as  man  applies  his  intelligence  and  only  his
         intelligence  to  any  object  at all, he unfailingly destroys the
         object." - Lev Tolstoy

              "If I had to choose between pain and nothing I  would  always
         choose pain." - William Faulkner

              "When we  first  look  straight  on  at  all  this  [American
         industrial  and  personal  waste], it's easy to fall into despair,
         overwhelmed at the picture of Yankee know-how run  amok,  chopping
         up  mountains  and  rivers  to  produce Barbie Dolls and Screaming
         Yellow Zonkers.  But before you crumple up in a heap,  notice  the
         critical  link in this awesome chain of industrialism.  The reason
         for overconsumption is overconsumers. If the consumer  refuses  to
         be  manipulated  and  makes  wise  choices  that  are not based on
         advertising, he - she - we!  - can  save  the  planet."  -  Laurel
         Robertson, in her book Laurel's Kitchen