Human Nature

(Human Nature)


"Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot."
"I don't have a solution but I admire the problem."
"Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken."
"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."
"There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing."
- Anonymous

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams

"The will to power, as the modern age from Hobbes to Nietzsche understood it, far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one. Power corrupts indeed when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before." - Hannah Arendt

"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power - that is not easy." - Aristotle

"One of the embarrassing facts from social psychology is that most stereotypes are true, in the only sense that stereotypes are ever true: on average." - Michael Bailey, psychologist, Northwestern

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." - P.T. Barnum

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant

"In my experience, people who are truly compassionate rarely use the word "compassion." Those who do talk compassion generally intend to be compassionate with your money, not their own. It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that 'compassion'." - Harry Browne

"I will tell you one thing about abstinence: It works. I haven’t had booze for over 13 years, cigarettes for over 10. It’s hard to implement but easy to maintain. Moderation, on the other hand, is easy to implement but hard to maintain. Let me give you an example: We all know people who have quit smoking, but how many people do you know who have gone from two packs of cigarettes a day to half a pack -- and kept it there? Or from a pack a day to just two or three cigarettes a day? Nice in theory, but almost impossible in practice." - Peter V. Burroughs

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." - Idiocy, www.despair.com

"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field." - Albert Einstein

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." - Indira Gandhi

"Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present." - William Lloyd Garrison, Abolitionist, (1805-1879)

"When you treat reprehensible and ludicrous arguments with respect you have elevated the reprehensible and made the ludicrous a bit more reasonable. Having a serious argument with a Nazi makes the horror of the Holocaust a debatable point. Don't wrestle in the mud with pigs. You get dirty and the pig likes it." - Jonah Goldberg

"People who live in glass houses must reeeeeallly trust their neighbors." - Gregoire

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." - Alexander Hamilton

"If any man says he hates war more than I do, he better have a knife, that's all I have to say." - Jack Handey

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor

"Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament-- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome." - Robert A. Heinlein

"I'm gonna live forever, or die trying." - Joseph Heller, Catch 22

"If you will it, it is no dream" - Theodor Herzl

"If you can not answer a man's argument, all it not lost; you can still call him vile names." - Elbert Hubbard

"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail" - Abraham Maslow

"For every human problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant." - H. L. Mencken

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken

"You know in your heart that nothing's really wrong with you. However, your heart is just a muscle. You "know" things with your brain." - Onion Horosocope, Cancer, 1/24/01

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"Sometimes you do something, and you get screwed. Sometimes it's the things you don't do, and you get screwed." - Fight Club, by Chuck Palahnuik

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." - Plato

"If you ignore the rules, people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so they don't apply to you." - Terry Pratchett

"I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics." - Ayn Rand

"The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others." - Ayn Rand

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." - Theodore Roosevelt

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." - Bertrand Russell

"Everybody wants to be a victim. And the paradox is that victim status accrues precisely to those who can acquire enough clout to make others afraid of them. Victimhood has become one of the fruits of power. Anyone can be an underdog; the trick is to be a registered, pedigreed underdog." - Joseph Belloc Sobran

"When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?" - Thomas Sowell

"Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead." - Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

"Not that it's devoid of interest now, but it is easier to introduce new complications than to resolve the old ones." - Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

"Should we throw another human wave of structural engineers at stabilizing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or should we just let the damn thing fall over and build a tower that doesn't suck?" - Neal Stephenson

"Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything." - Moe Szyslak (Moe on The Simpsons)

"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything." - Nikola Tesla

"Save time: Exact bloody revenge now, before the bastards have a chance to wrong you." - The Onion, Sagittarius Horoscope, 3/15/00

"Wait by the river long enough and the body of your enemy will float by you." - Sun Tsu

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

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut

"By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me." - Oscar Wilde